


we light ourselves up from the deepest of pits

by feralphoenix



Series: you can only use your own [11]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, American Sign Language, Autistic Frisk, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - C-PTSD, Depression, Disabled Character, Ensemble Cast, F/M, Nonverbal Frisk, Other, Past Child Abuse, Puberty, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-18 08:43:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 87,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9377210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: “Tra la la,” says the Riverperson cheerfully, startling you out of your negative spiral. “Great rewards await after great trials, and the greatest approaches. Hmm… what sort of rewards could be waiting after that…?”As usual with their weirdly apropos non sequiturs, you’re not sure whether you ought to be heartened or creeped out.Or: Asriel and the fallen humans prepare to break the Barrier.





	1. we know the night, it has breathed in us, yet we have lived.

**Author's Note:**

> _(boats light up the river in a string of flame_ – we are born wild, made of wind.)
> 
>  
> 
> this story is set two years after [to rest in crypts and wake in gardens](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8098129).
> 
> warnings for discussion of all the usual stuff pertinent to chara (c-ptsd, anxiety, self-negativity, abuse, etc) and frisk (neglect, bpd-typical abandonment issues, food/hoarding issues, etc).
> 
> wrt the "disabled character" tag, chara has chronic pain (among various other mild-to-moderate chronic health issues) as a result of their poisoning. see [somebody out there needs you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5431163) for details.
> 
> this first chapter also involves a little bit of non-sexual nudity.
> 
> chara's name sign is shamelessly cribbed from mangaluva's [give me a sign](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5448176), and frisk's from inverts' [pierce the heavens](https://archiveofourown.org/series/426649) series, both of which you ought to read if you haven't yet.
> 
> an expansion on the little tutorial in chapter one can be found [here](http://sameatschildren.tumblr.com/post/45962915522/); some of the linked resources have help especially for trans women.

You pick up your glass of cider and sip from it, doing your best not to squirm in your chair as your grandmother adjusts her reading glasses on her snout and flips gently through the pages of your math homework. Toriel is absolutely silent as she checks your answers; she doesn’t even use a calculator to double-check. It’s pretty impressive, you think, that she can do it all in her head; the last time you said that to her she chuckled and ruffled your hair and told you _Frisk, back when your grandfather and I first came to these caverns, the modern calculator had not even been invented yet. We wrote our complicated math problems out longhand or we worked them out upon an abacus._

Having lived for over a thousand years probably gives you plenty of time to get really, really good at math, you guess. But her really-really-good-at-math-ness makes it that much more nervewracking when she’s tutoring you.

Two years ago, when you’d first arrived in the underground and decided to make your home with Chara and Asriel, you’d homeschooled under Toriel until she was sure that you would be on the same level academically as the monster kids your age. Chara had stressed, too, that they wanted you to have the option to keep on homeschooling until you felt ready to enter a school environment, and that you could go back to it if you tried public school and decided it wasn’t working for you.

 _You’ll learn best when you’re comfortable and in an environment where your needs can be met,_ they had said. _There is no objectively right or wrong choice—just whatever works best for you. We’re flexible, here._

All in all you’d spent about a year under Toriel’s tutelage, so that you could start middle school with the other kids instead of showing up in elementary school at its very end. It helped that MK, who’s a year older than you are, reported to you about what middle school is like and how much fun they were having there. And you’re having fun too, now that you’re going with them. School is a lot more manageable when all the teachers and most of your classmates understand you when you sign.

But even now, you—and MK too—come every school day to do your homework here in Home, under Toriel’s watchful eye and with her and Asgore providing snacks. They still give Chara and Asriel occasional advice about ruling and such from time to time, but they’re pursuing their hobbies in their retirement—and for Toriel that means teaching.

Sometimes she explains things in easier ways than your normal teachers do. Others, she just has more time than they do to go over things with you, since she’s dealing with tutoring two kids instead of splitting her attention between fifteen or twenty. Even when she can’t or doesn’t have to help you understand your work, she always encourages and is patient with you.

The snacks and the stories that Toriel and Asgore often tell you are a big perk, too.

At length Toriel sets the papers down and smiles at you. “Very good,” she tells you, and you let out the breath you’d been holding. “No mistakes this time. It appears that the extra time you and I have spent on algebra has paid off.”

You squirm in your seat a little, relieved. _I was sure I’d gotten some wrong… I’m glad, I didn’t want to disappoint you._

“Oh, my dear, you could not possibly disappoint me,” Toriel says kindly, reaching to pat your head lightly. “As long as you are learning at your own pace and in an environment suited to you, I will always be satisfied with your progress.”

You smile a little and push into the squishy pad of her palm.

“Yo, you got the all clear?” MK says from the entrance to the kitchen; you look up to watch them precede your grandfather into the room. Asgore has a tea tray in one arm, and your stomach growls a little at the promise of his signature biscuits.

You give them both a thumbs up. MK says “Awesome!” and Asgore smiles. You take your phone out and file your homework away under Box H for safekeeping so that the table will be clear for them to put the snacks.

“So is there anything you wanna go do later?” MK asks, taking their seat; you shift to better look at them. You’ve both grown over the past two years, but them especially: They used to be shorter than you even though they’re a year older, but they’re almost a whole head taller than you now, and a lot steadier on their feet. You don’t have to dive and catch them by the back of the smock so much anymore, which is good because if they keep getting bigger you don’t know if you’d actually be able to save them that way or if they’d just yank you down with them.

 _I wish I could stay for longer, but I have to go straight home today,_ you respond. _Chara and I have to go out for…_ You hesitate very briefly and finish the sentence with _clothes shopping._

If MK notices your minute pause, they don’t mention it. “Ahh. That sucks, I guess, but when you need more clothes you need more clothes, yo. We can hang some other time.”

You smile and nod. Toriel and Asgore are, you notice, both watching you, but their eyes on you are neutral, and you don’t think that they’re thinking anything particularly judgmental just because you’ve chosen to omit what sort of clothes shopping it is to your best friend. Maybe they think it’s just because you’re entitled to your privacy. And you’re glad of that, but you figure that you might wind up talking to MK about it anyway someday later, when you’ve been able to decide for yourself how you feel about this.

“In that case, why don’t you leave with Frisk so that you may at least stay together until you must part ways to go home?” Asgore suggests. “When you finish your tea, I can put together snacks for you to take back with you.”

“Dude, that’d be great!” MK exclaims, bouncing in their chair. You’ve got to duck your head a little to hide your smile at their calm and irreverence, calling their own king’s father (not to mention their own tutor’s husband) ‘dude’. “Thanks a lot.”

“It is our pleasure,” Asgore replies, beaming. You can’t imagine any sort of human king or political leader reacting like this, being so easygoing, and you’re selfishly glad that monsters can be and are. It makes it so much easier for you to relax and just live here among them.

Your adoptive grandparents send you and your best friend out on your way laden with snacks—you store yours in a box with empty space, and help MK stuff their pockets, knowing that their parents or sister will help them unpack later. You say your goodbyes, and venture out into Snowdin Forest.

As soon as you step into the snow your glasses begin to tint soft smoky gray, saving you from having to squint and stick close to MK as you travel. Even so, they lead the way; you let them. Their feet crunch through the snow, and you wonder a little but don’t ask whether it bothers them to go barefoot around their home since they’re a reptilian monster or if they’re just used to it by now.

MK fills the air with chatter as you walk, looking back at you now and again to give you opportunities to reply if you want. They tell you more about the project that they’ve been working on, about their neighbors’ kids’ quest to get Rufus or Holly in on their games of Monsters and Humans for more realism (knowing more about Holly’s arrival, you can see why she’s been refusing), about the argument their sister had with the girl she apparently likes, about Undyne and Papyrus’ recent misadventures. Mostly you smile and let them talk, occasionally prompting them to give more details—you love how excited they are to tell you all about what happens in Snowdin when you’re not around, and how much fun they always seem to have talking to you. It’s nice, having them for a friend.

You arrive at Snowdin a little too soon for your taste, but you promised you would be back in Hotland once you were finished here, and you don’t want to break your word. So you wave goodbye to MK and take the fork to find the Riverperson.

“Where to?” they ask you, and you answer _Hotland_ and carefully climb onto the longboat so that you can get going.

You take out your phone to send a message that you’re on your way now, and play idly with some of the apps, but none of them can really hold your interest for long. You tap your toes absently on the bottom of the boat as you sit, suddenly besieged with one of those sudden and inexplicable bouts of formless worry. This shopping trip is probably going to be weird, and if Chara gets frustrated with you—if you do something to bother or upset them—

“Tra la la,” says the Riverperson cheerfully, startling you out of your negative spiral. “Great rewards await after great trials, and the greatest approaches. Hmm… what sort of rewards could be waiting after that…?”

As usual with their weirdly apropos non sequiturs, you’re not sure whether you ought to be heartened or creeped out.

Eventually you make it all the way up the river to the Hotland stairs, and—you let out a big huff of breath and a relieved smile lights up your face when you spot Chara waiting there for you.

They must have changed clothes when they got home from monarch work—they’re dressed down, in jeans and sneakers and a faded T-shirt with their hair hanging loose to their shoulders. They’ve got their knife clipped to a belt loop as usual, but their special gloves aren’t on underneath their wrist braces; it’s about as casual as your guardian ever gets outside your actual home.

They smile when they see you and stand in that slow careful way that middle-aged human grown-ups sometimes do, careful of their joints. Even so, they’ve made it down the rest of the stairs by the time you’re close enough to hop off the Riverperson’s boat, and are already opening their arms for you to sail into.

So that’s exactly what you do—holding back just enough so that you won’t knock them right over onto the ground, wrapping your arms around their waist and hugging tight. Chara folds their arms around you too, warm and strong and secure, and all your vague worries are instantly banished—you feel like all your emotions have melted into a mini sun of happiness, like you’re beaming tiny hearts in every direction like something out of Alphys’ old manga volumes. Chara runs their fingers gently up and down your upper back in a scritching motion, then reaches up to pet your hair.

“Hey, you,” they say soft and gentle, with that melty-warm note of tenderness that only you and Asriel and a handful of their closest friends ever get to hear. You shiver with joy, all pressed up against them safe and loved. “Enjoy the homework party at Asgore and Toriel’s?”

You ease back just enough to nod, and Chara smiles down at you, leaning in to kiss your forehead. “I’m glad to hear that.”

You could float. Instead you bump your face into their sternum, nuzzling in close and turning your face to rest your cheek against their heartbeat with a happy sigh.

Chara presses another kiss to the top of your head and runs their hands in long brisk strokes down the length of your spine, signaling you to let go. You’re reluctant to, but you still get to bask in your parent’s love, so you ease off without protest. They smile down at you, reaching up with both hands to stroke your cheeks with both thumbs and make you giggle.

“Ready to head to the tailor’s?” they ask.

A little flicker of that anxiety revives in the pit of your belly like a curl of brush smoke, and you try to tamp it down. Chara must notice anyway, because they stroke your hair gently, resting their hands on your shoulders.

“We’ll make this as quick and painless as possible,” they tell you. “If you get _too_ uncomfortable we can always stop partway, but this _does_ need to get done sooner or later, and I think sooner will be better for you. But I’ll be here with you to help every step of the way.

“And then when we go home, your father will be there to make us pasta-and-vegetable scramble, and I hear he’s also going to be making strawberry rhubarb and marble pies for dessert. So you’ve got something to look forward to when we’re done.”

You take a deep breath. _You promise we can go home if it gets really bad?_

“I promise,” Chara tells you, sober.

 _Okay._ You shake your head. _Anyway, it’s not so scary if you’re with me._

They smile at you, small and crooked, and reach out to take your hand. “Okay. I’ll do my best to look after you, so let’s go.”

You squeeze their hand, they squeeze yours back, and up the stairs the two of you go, side by side.

 

 

The trip to the city of New Home is a quick one if you take the elevators (which you and Chara normally do), and walking its streets is faster with Chara than if you have Asriel along, since everyone likes to stop Asriel to chat. Everyone still greets Chara too, but you get dragged into way fewer meandering conversations with their subjects.

Two years ago, when you’d still been trying to settle in, you’d wondered anxiously (and with more than a little affront) if this meant that everyone was less friendly towards Chara. They and Asriel had just smiled and explained to you that the people of New Home—and the whole underground—love Chara just as much as Asriel, but that everyone understands that Chara’s threshold for social interaction is lower and nobody wants to overload them over something minor, so people who aren’t especially close to them let them approach on their own terms.

“It helps keep me from getting too distracted when I’m trying to finish the job,” Chara had added. “Sometimes it pays to have a reputation for being very shy.”

All that said, you arrive at the tailor’s in a little less than fifteen minutes. As soon as the door closes behind you, your heart starts to thump unpleasantly in the floor of your jaw, and you grip the side of Chara’s shirt tight.

One of the tailor monsters notices the two of you, and waves a noodly arm at you, offering a jovial smile. “Ah, Your Majesty, Your Highness! Good to see you! You’re right on time for that fitting appointment—early, even!”

Chara puts a gentle arm around your shoulders. “May Frisk and I borrow a changing room and a tape measure for a little bit? I know I mentioned this before while we were setting the appointment up, but I think they may be more comfortable if I show them how to take the basic measurements myself, before we move on to the things that can be done over their shirt.”

“Of course,” the tailor says, and points to the other side of the building. “Changing room 9 should be open, and I set a measuring tape there beforehand.”

“Thank you,” Chara tells them, and they herd you across the shop, ducking in through the door and closing it after you.

Finally alone with them, you heave a little sigh. Your heart’s still beating uncomfortably fast, but it’s a little better knowing that you’ve escaped being measured and examined by the tailor you still don’t know all that well.

Chara reaches out to stroke your hair, and you watch your reflections in the mirror rather than looking over at them. Their expression is complicated—they’re smiling but there’s also pain in their eyes. “Poor Frisk,” they murmur. “I was just as unhappy when I had to come down for my first bra fitting, too.”

You make a face. _I don’t have to take my underpants off, do I…?_

Chara shakes their head so emphatically that their hair flies in a red-and-silver halo around their face and shoulders. “Only your shirt, and you can keep that on for a while longer. I think it would be easier if I demonstrated how to get a ballpark measurement on myself first, if you’d be comfortable with that. And then you can decide whether you’d rather try yourself or have me help you. I can step outside if you want to try measuring on your own, too, if you would feel best that way. Everything comes down to your comfort level. You do _need_ this kind of underwear to help support the weight on your chest so that your ribs and your back won’t hurt, but I do not want to walk all over your boundaries.”

Because it’s Chara and you know that they _do_ want you to really be honest about what you want, you take a moment to think about it instead of just trying to please them with your answer. _I think I’m okay with you showing me first, anyway,_ you tell them at length. _I also… think I want to wait to decide whether to have you help me until after I see what I’d have to do._

Chara nods. “That’s a good idea, and very fair too. Here—I’ll show you how to measure the size of your chest, and explain everything while I’m doing it. Hold on a moment.” And, without any further ado, they take their shirt off, hanging it on one of the hooks on the wall.

Even knowing what you’re here for, you still avert your eyes politely when they start to take their bra off too, instead focusing on your own reflection.

Puberty has sort of crept up on you sneakily over the past year or so. You’ve gotten taller since coming to the underground, and you’ve gained a _lot_ of weight too now that you’re eating regular meals with bigger portion sizes—when you were ten you had really skinny arms and legs, but now if you’re standing with your feet exactly next to each other, your thighs touch, and there’s a new squishiness to your tummy. Your face is still really round and babyish, you think, but now that your body’s filling out you look less like a gawky kid and more like a real twelve-year-old.

Maybe it’s the weight gain that’s made this part of puberty so much of a surprise. It was hard to miss when you started getting longer, thicker hair on your legs and your privates and stomach, and under your armpits and in a couple other places that you’d never heard hair was supposed to grow on humans with bodies like yours. (You’d sat on that part for a couple weeks, vividly remembering pediatricians telling you how ‘abnormal’ your private parts are, before tearfully asking Chara if it was weird to have hair in those places too, and they had hugged you and told you that it wasn’t weird, that there’s nothing wrong with you.)

But though nowadays you can look at photos of yourself from last year and see that your chest was starting to grow, you somehow managed to be completely unaware of it until you had small but noticeably heavy and pendulous mounds on your front. Finally, Chara looked at you a week ago and said that it was probably past time to get you something to support your chest and hold it still. They said that the increased feelings of hopelessness and the sensation of being trapped you’ve been having lately might actually be because your chest is _literally_ weighing you down, and that they want to try getting you proper underwear before talking to Toriel about increasing the dose on your antidepressants. Asriel had agreed.

Your parents take medication and mental health very seriously, and it’s knowing that fact that made you agree as much as anything. If getting bras to wear doesn’t make you feel better, they _will_ talk it over with Toriel, and they _will_ make sure that they can adjust your medication accordingly. They love you, and they’re careful with you, and they’ve been consistent with that love and care over the past two years no matter what—even over the few times that you tried timidly to lash out to make sure that their love wasn’t conditional after all. You can trust them, and you can talk to them and trust that they will listen to you.

“All right,” Chara says, and you face towards them again.

This isn’t the first time you’ve seen them with no shirt on, but it always feels weird to see them in any state of partial nakedness. Not weird in an _uncomfortable_ way, like it always was with your birth parents, but still strange in a way that it isn’t for Asriel. Maybe because he’s covered in fur where they’re not, which sort of feels like he’s always wearing an extra layer of fuzzy pajamas, and it’s odd to consider Chara as a person with a body when their being your parent and their efforts to keep their and Asriel’s love life mostly private lull you into thinking of them as sexless.

Maybe that’s not fair to them. They didn’t stop being a person when they became your parent, so maybe you should try harder to think of them as one outside their role in caring for you.

While you’re turning that thought over in your head like a smooth stone in your hands, Chara picks up the tape measure. They turn so that they’re facing you diagonally, an angle where you can see what they’re doing as they pull the tape tight around their ribcage, close underneath their breasts.

“Now, this won’t get you quite as perfect a fit as you would if you were to have the tailor take a lot of exact measurements,” they say, “but not everyone is comfortable with having their body examined that closely, and so taking your own measurements this way is quite enough to be getting on with for now—we’ll get you some store-bought underthings to try and see what fits and what you like, then talk to the tailors using the numbers we get from this right now and your preferences as a base.

“But to make that intermediate bra-hunting step as quick and painless as we can, first one will need to calculate one’s band and cup size. Band size is simple—you measure the circumference of your ribcage, tight as you can. Note down that number, and either round up or round down to the nearest even number, depending on what’s closest.”

Chara pinches the tape measure between their fingertips and unspools it from around their ribs, holding it up to look at the number. They produce a notepad from their inventory, pick up a pen on the shelf, and note down their own measurement.

 _Then what do you do?_ you ask.

“After you’ve got a band size, then you go on to calculate cup size,” they say. They hesitate for a moment, looking at you seriously. “This is the bit that I’m not sure you’d be comfortable having someone else help on, because you have to bend over perpendicular to do it. _I’m_ not okay with having someone I don’t trust tell me to take this position and then manhandle me, so I don’t want to ask that of you if you wouldn’t like it either.”

You nod. _Will you show me?_

Chara smiles a little at this. “Of course.” They do bend, slowly, at the waist; their chest hangs down freely, and they loop the measuring tape up over their back, adjusting it with what seems to you like a lot of practice. “If you want to do this by yourself, I can help you get the tape in the right place, or just tell you if it’s too high or low; if you’d rather have me step out, the margin of error won’t be so bad that it would be difficult to shop around. Everything is up to your comfort level.”

So saying, they bring the tape around their breasts, carefully adjusting the tape again to make sure they’ve got it right. “For this part you don’t have to measure so tightly—you want the measuring tape to be a little loose over the nipple line.” They go silent for a moment, and you frown, squinting at what you can see of their face—through their hair and at this angle you can’t really tell, but you think they look pensive. After a while they sigh and straighten up, glancing at the tape and making a face; they don’t note the number down this time.

Only after this do they notice you staring, and they smile at you, a little pained. “When you get a little older like me and your skin starts to lose its elasticity,” they say, “or if you’ve lost weight and have some empty flesh in your breasts, you also need to take measurements like this one lying on your back and standing up, then average those numbers so that you can make sure you’re not overestimating your cup size. But you’re not going to have to worry about that for a long time.”

As they explain this, they set the measuring tape down and take their bra back off the hook on the wall, wrapping it around their ribs and doing up the fastenings in front of them, then twisting the band around so that they can put the front of the bra on properly. Now that you’re actually watching them, you can see the way that they carefully push all of their breast tissue into the cups before adjusting the straps.

Emboldened a little by the circumstances, you point a timid finger to the part of Chara’s chest that’s still visible over the fabric of their underwear, at the long, shallow shiny white streaks down their skin that don’t look like scars. _What are those?_

“Those are stretch marks,” they tell you. “Most of us furless folks get them somewhere or other when we grow and as our weight changes—you could get some on your thighs or chest, your stomach, anywhere. They’re normal. And I’m glad you asked instead of waiting, this time.” They touch your face lightly, fingers stroking your cheeks; the contact relaxes you. “I know talking about bodies can be scary or uncomfortable. But if there’s ever anything you want to know, you can always ask me. If I don’t know, I will go find out.”

 _Okay._ You take a deep breath. _I think I want you to help a little._

Chara nods. “Whatever you need.”

You pull your own T-shirt off, hanging it up on the wall, and look at your reflection again, the still-unfamiliar sight of breasts coming out of your own chest giving you a moment’s pause. It’s very weird—not in a way that feels _bad,_ not in a way that makes you _really_ uncomfortable, but something that you know will take getting used to.

With Chara’s help you get the measuring tape up around your ribs—“You want it really snug underneath your bust,” they advise, “but still straight and not tilted”—and it’s strange and tickly against your skin as you pull it tight.

“Have you got it?” they ask, and you pinch the spot where the tape meets and nod. “Good, then try to let go.” You do, and peer at the number; you reach for the pen and notepad to jot it down. “Now for the trickier part.”

 _I trust you,_ you tell Chara, who gives you that little pained smile and pats your head.

“You can just sort of lean back against the wall if that feels safer,” they say, surprising you a little. “Just sort of push your butt and your thighs up to the side of the wall and then lean over, to make sure nobody can sneak up behind you. That’s what I always did.”

The mental picture makes you giggle a little, but you do as they suggest, backing up to the wall and then leaning over. You giggle more at the coolness of the wall against the underside of your thighs, still palpable through the fabric of your tights.

Chara again helps you get the measuring tape around your back, holding it in place with their thumb while you fumble with the ends. The tape was tickly on the skin of your ribs, but it’s even ticklier on your bare nipples, and you have to fight not to squirm so that you can get a clean measurement.

You pull your shirt back on as Chara looks over the numbers you’ve written down.

“For your band I think we’re going to round up, since you’ll be growing anyway,” they say. “Now, you take the difference between your band size and your bust size and calculate your cup size from there. That’s three inches for you, so a C—you _have_ gotten big over the past year, I’m glad we didn’t wait any longer to go underwear shopping then.”

You reach out and pull on Chara’s sleeve. _Isn’t a C cup… pretty big on someone my age?_ you venture, suddenly worried again.

They stroke your back. “Not particularly. Human media tends to make a lot of noise about breast size that isn’t very accurate—I was very surprised when I came here and was able to get a much better education about bra sizing than anything I’d ever seen on the surface. And only some monsters actually have pectoral breasts like humans do in the first place! Lucky for me that Asgore and Toriel have been around for long enough that they knew where to take me to find people who could help.

“And the underground has changed quite a bit in its knowledge of human needs, these past thirty years,” they go on, smiling at you a little wryly. “Anyway—now that we have these ballparks, we can have the tailor take a few more fine measurements over your shirt, and then head out to a clothing store to see what sort of styles you like, buy you a few tide-overs until the tailors are finished. There’s all sorts of colors, some with decorations and some that are plain… and there are different kinds of cup shapes too.

“I think we’ll look at some sports bras too, while you’re there,” they say, their expression gone thoughtful. “Those sort of compress your chest and make it smaller, hold it more still, for exercise’s sake, but since they minimize the size of your breasts a little, it can be a way for you to see if you like the way a flatter chest looks on you.” Chara turns, resting their hands lightly on your shoulders. “Unfortunately, I can’t let you try binders until you’re finished growing. I don’t want to take the risk of all that pressure on your ribcage hurting you, or stunting your growth. But once you _are_ fully grown, if you’re interested in trying one, you can ask Rufus about them. I don’t know much about what sort of binders are good and all the tips for binder sizing and safety, but he can teach you anything you want or need to know.”

You nod. _That sounds reasonable, I think._

They smile. “Good. Now—shall we get going?”

You wait for Chara to pull their shirt on to leave the dressing room; they hand off the measurements to the tailor, who putters around you with their own measuring tape, directing you to lift your arms and once even to hold your breasts up. They never touch you directly, letting you have a safe margin of distance; they wink and tell you that any inaccuracy will just give you extra growing room, making you smile and putting you more at ease.

Once this is done, Chara promises to contact the tailor and let them know what styles of bra you find at the store that you like, and you leave the store, headed off to take care of the actual practical half of today’s shopping trip.

 

 

You return home in less than an hour, tired but triumphant—the bag in your arms holds one regular bra and two sports ones, and you’re wearing another regular bra underneath your shirt. Every time you pass a mirror or a glass picture frame, you turn to stare a little at your reflection: Even though this is the “normal” kind of underwear and not the one that’s supposed to press your chest flatter, your breasts look smaller, and they don’t droop anywhere near as much. They don’t jiggle while you walk either, and you feel less anxious, though it’s hard to tell whether that’s because the weight on your chest (Chara might find that one pretty funny if you told them) is contained or whether it’s because the trip to the tailor’s and then the clothing store really was a lot better than you were fearing.

“Why don’t you go put those away?” Chara suggests, stretching a little as they slide their shoes off by stepping on the heels. “I’m going to go bug Ree in the kitchen—we can wait for him to finish cooking in the living room when you’re done.”

You smile and nod, heading right down the hall to your room. Two years ago, after you got your living arrangements settled, you’d chosen the room in the middle of the hall, the one closest to Chara and Asriel’s. Some of the furniture in here is their old stuff from when they were little, like your bed, and some is Toriel’s or Asgore’s, left in the basement in storage when they moved back to Home, like your chest of drawers and desk. But some of the things were bought just for you, like the lamp and the little toy piano that you use to practice on days when you can’t visit Undyne to use her real one.

The middle drawer is where you keep your socks and your underpants, and you take your new bras out of the bag to find an empty space to put them. It takes a minute’s worth of shuffling, but by stacking your underpants on top of each other, you manage to clear a space big enough for them to fit without having to crumple them up awkwardly.

Satisfied, you scratch at your back for a minute—the fabric of the bra you’ve got on is stiff and itchy, though Chara promises that it will be more comfortable once you’ve had a few days to get used to it—and then bring the bag back out with you to put in the recycling bin in the foyer before you return to the living room.

Chara has already staked a claim to the big cushy reading chair by the fireplace when you arrive. They’ve scooted up against the left arm, leaving enough space for you to squish in next to them, but you still hesitate for a moment and wait for them to pat the space in invitation before you actually do sit. They get an arm around your shoulders, and you nestle in close, happy for the contact.

“Your father informs me that dinner is going to be in about ten minutes or so,” Chara tells you, leaning their head against yours. “But we can relax until then.”

You smile wide and let out a grateful sigh. Chara kneads your arm gently.

“If…” they begin at length, and you turn your head to rest your chin on their arm and look up into their face. Their cheeks go darker pink and they look away for a moment, their eyes flicking back to meet your gaze the next breath they take. “If you have anything else you’re worried about when it comes to—to puberty and bodies and growing up and all of that, you can _always_ talk to me. I want to help, Frisk—I want to be a good parent.”

 _I will ask,_ you tell them, and then hesitate. _Um…_

They shift a little in the chair to face you more fully. “Yes? You can take your time.”

You look over your shoulder a little to make sure that Asriel is still in the kitchen, then clear your throat a bit. _Does all this…_ you gesture to your chest here for lack of any elegant way to explain, then continue, _Does it mean that I’m going to get my period soon too?_

Chara reaches out to stroke your hair, their bitter smile more than enough to tell you that they can guess why this worries you.

“I can’t say for sure,” they tell you, “but you might this year or next. I didn’t get mine until I was fourteen, but I hit puberty on the late side because of all the stress I put my body through as a child, after all.” They pause and pat your hair again. “Mine are so hard on me because of the damage I did to myself. Yours will probably be a lot less painful and scary, and even if they _are_ that bad, we know how to deal with that.” They hold your face lightly in both hands and lean in to kiss your forehead, the press of their mouth warm and brisk through your bangs. “I promise you that we will take good care of you, Frisk,” they say seriously, “and it will be okay. And you know I don’t promise that it will be okay if I cannot be completely certain that I can fulfill such a promise.”

You lean forward and into their lap, twisting around so that you can hug them around the waist without bending your legs too painfully. Chara laughs quietly and wraps their arms around you in turn, kissing the top of your head again; you wriggle so that your cheek won’t be pressed hard into the chain of their locket.

“I believe you are getting to be too big for this, my child,” they say, sounding so much like Toriel that it sends you into a fit of giggles.

You hear a brief clicking of claws on the floorboards, and then you hear Asriel’s voice saying, “If they’re too big to fit on _your_ lap, _I’ll_ take them,” which makes you giggle even harder.

“Hello, Ree,” Chara says over the top of your head. You open one eye to watch your adoptive father’s approach: He stops right next to the chair, leaning in to kiss Chara deeply over the top of your head—it makes a little wet noise, and Chara hums low in their chest, making you blush—before opening his arms so that you can bounce up into them. He lifts you up like you weigh nothing, cradling you like a baby; you wrap your arms around his neck and laugh as he nuzzles your cheek.

“Dinner’s ready,” Asriel announces, swaying a little where he stands to rock you. (You’re so happy you could just _melt.)_ “Come on, let’s go eat.”

He’s already set the table, and lowers you into your chair expertly and with care before moving to his own seat, Chara joining you moments later. Your plate is heaped with pasta, nuts, and green vegetables—Asriel’s vegetable scramble is only very lightly seasoned with olive oil and garlic, gentle on your tongue where you might get overwhelmed by too many textures and flavors when you’ve had an especially anxious day. You sign a quick _thank you_ over your food before digging in heartily; from the smile in his eyes as he watches you, you’re sure he knows that you mean both for dinner itself and for thinking of you like this.

Pie follows once you’ve eaten the main course—strawberry rhubarb and chocolate-vanilla marble, both freshly baked, just as Chara promised you. Two slices is all you’re allowed, so you ask for one of each: Later on you’ll eat more of the strawberry since that’s your favorite, but Asriel’s marble pie is delicious too, and you want to take advantage of its freshness.

Chara gets the used dishes and goes to wash them; you stay at the table with Asriel to tell him about your day, moving from your own chair to plant yourself in his lap. While he’s telling you about _his_ day, gently making fun of his various council members and helpers, Chara returns, getting their knitting from the bookshelf and perching in the reading chair to work on their latest project.

Then: A sharp slam and the patter of feet as someone rushes through the front door.

Your heart nearly leaps out of your chest, and when you glance around the room Chara has frozen where they’re sitting with wide eyes—but it’s just Alphys who comes running into the living room, so you relax.

She slows to a stop barely before she’s gotten past the bookcase, clapping a hand to her chest as she gasps for breath. Her lab coat is askew and she’s (somehow, despite being reptilian) sweating heavily—she must have come charging straight here from work.

Asriel gets an arm around you and lifts you up with him like a little kid as he stands. You’re grateful for how stable he is, leaning into his warmth; he crosses the room to stand by Chara’s chair, setting his free hand on their shoulder for a moment as if to calm them. (They do close their eyes and take a deep breath.) “Alphys, is something the matter? Can I get you a drink?”

“Sorry to b-b-barge, in,” she says between pants. “I j-just c-couldn’t, I h-had t-to, to t-t-t-tell you right aw-way.” Here she takes a deep breath, visibly straightening up where she stands like she’s trying to regain equilibrium. “The f—final version of the, the soul s-separation and s-support machine. It’s d-done and t-tested.”

Asriel swallows hard. Chara sets their knitting down.

“How soon?” Asriel asks, hushed.

Alphys is still sweating and shaky, but she lifts a fist and unfolds her thumb, offering you all a smile that’s surprisingly confident. “We’ll b-be ready in e-exactly a week.”

 

 

You manage to sleep for maybe a couple of hours, but that’s it; once you’re awake you’re awake, and no amount of rolling over or hugging your favorite doll close helps you fall back to sleep.

Sighing, you sit up and put your glasses back on. You’ll just go get a glass of water or something for now—you don’t actually have to decide whether to bother Chara and Asriel until you get back.

You open your door as quietly as you can and tiptoe outside, and then immediately stop in your tracks when you see that the door to your parents’ room is still open a crack, and there’s a strip of light showing from inside. Their voices are coming from inside too, so they’re obviously very much awake.

Unsure whether you can sneak past without drawing their attention, you hesitate, and their words begin to register in your brain when you hear _your name_.

“—Frisk’s biological parents, you know. I don’t know what we’re going to do, if we get out and then start monster-human relations off with a custody battle.” Chara’s voice is bitter, and their tone and the words they’re saying send your heart dropping cold out of your body.

Asriel makes a soft sympathetic noise. “If it comes down to that, we’ll fight for them. I don’t want to give Frisk up any more than you do, and—well, from everything they’ve told us about their old parents, I don’t think they’re really going to give us any trouble. Frisk is happy with us, and we love them. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?”

Chara groans. “I don’t know. I hope so, but I don’t trust the system. We just have to be ready in case it does happen, so that we won’t be taken off guard, so that we’ll have a counterattack prepared.”

You want to let your legs give out, you want to slump against the wall and cry, but then they’ll know that you’re here eavesdropping, and—you didn’t even _mean_ to, you never _wanted_ to hear this. Not your parents, the only grownups in the world who’ve cared to love you and keep you safe, worrying about you being _taken away._

“I’ll talk to Mom and Dad, and we’ll think of something. We won’t let it happen,” Asriel says firmly. There’s a long silence in which all you can hear is your heartbeat, and then he says, “And you _know_ that, Chara. What are you _actually_ worried about?”

Against your better judgment, you lean in closer to the door, straining your hearing.

It’s quiet for another long while, and then:

“My parents will still be alive too,” Chara says, small and brittle.

A pause. “Well, they definitely won’t be able to take _you_ away,” Asriel says, gentle. “You’re forty. You’re an adult. They’ll be old, if they really are still around. There’s nothing for you to be afraid of.”

Chara breathes in, sharp and pained. “But I still am,” they say, that warning edge in their voice that they get sometimes when they’re close to tears.

Fabric shifts. There’s the creaking of mattress springs. “That’s okay. I’ll protect you.”

“I don’t even want to _see_ them,” Chara goes on, their voice muffled and weak. “It’s taken me so long to build up what little stability I have. They could destroy it in an instant. I don’t want this, Ree. I don’t want _any_ of this.”

“You’re free from them,” Asriel says. “Just like Frisk is free from their parents, and all the other fallen humans are free from the families that they don’t want to see again, too. You know how to defend yourself, and if that’s not enough, I’ll keep you safe. You’re free. We’re _all_ going to be free.” A small pause here, and another rustle; you guess that he’s probably nuzzling their hair or face. Your throat is dry and your knees are locked painfully to keep you in place without leaning noisily on anything. “You can be happy about that, if you want.”

Chara doesn’t say anything.

There’s a deep sense of unease in you, unbearable and prickling like a limb regaining circulation; if it were physical you’d be dancing in place to try to bear the discomfort and make it go away as soon as possible.

Then: A tiny, muffled sob.

You give up on trying to remain silent and undetected. You don’t understand why Chara’s so scared and upset, not really; you just know that they _are,_ and that you can’t stand it, it’s scaring you so much worse—you need them to stop, or else you’re going to cry too. Before you can talk yourself out of it, you reach out and knock on the doorframe, pushing their door open.

Your parents are sitting on their bed, both in pajamas, Chara held tight in Asriel’s arms. They don’t look up towards you, face still hidden in your father’s chest, but he turns to see you: First his eyes widen in surprise, and then he smiles awkwardly, shifting so that he’s got Chara safely tucked to his chest with one arm and the other is free to hold out to you.

Your first step into their room is tentative, but Asriel nods and beckons, and you nearly trip over your feet rushing in to get close to the two of them. There’s enough room in his lap for you to squeeze in next to Chara, and so naturally you do, stretching one arm around them and one arm around Asriel as far and as tight as you can.

“I’m sorry,” Chara croaks against Asriel’s side. “I hate to worry you like this.”

It’s too hard to try to find the words to tell them that it’s okay and you don’t mind that will really convince them that you’re genuine, so you just try to hug harder.

“Did we wake you?” Asriel asks, leaning down to bump his nose against the crown of your head, gentle.

You shake your head against his front. “Couldn’t sleep,” you say aloud. You hesitate just a moment longer, then—“Got nervous,” you append. “I wasn’t sure why.”

“We’re all nervous, I think,” Asriel says, hugging you and Chara close. His heartbeat is steady and strong against your forehead. “This has been so long in coming, and now—just like that, we’ll be breaking the Barrier in a week! But it’ll be okay. We’ve worked really hard for a long time for this. And we _won’t_ let anybody take you away from us, Frisk.”

Chara doesn’t say anything, but they do get an arm around your waist, pulling you in closer to them. It’s hot and stuffy in the hug, cocooned by the arms of both your parents, but the physical pressure of your packed bodies and the strength in their arms is a reassurance you need right now.

“Can I stay here tonight?” you ask, small and quiet.

“Yes,” Chara says thickly. “I think—we all might feel safer that way.”

Asriel loosens his hold on you, letting Chara shuffle back on the mattress and wipe their face on their sleeve. You get back to your feet to let him scoot over to his side of the bed, and take your glasses off to set them on the top of the dresser, near the old family photo of your parents as kids.

“You can have the middle,” Chara says, and you smile and jump up onto the bed to find your place in between your parents.

“Okay, let’s try this again,” Asriel jokes, and you giggle a little, wriggling down in the blankets to find a comfortable spot. Chara leans in to kiss your forehead and hold you close; they lie down beside you and hold your hand tightly under the covers. Their fingers are weathered and pockmarked with scars of varying ages, but their grip is steady and strong.

Asriel gets the lamp, and the springs groan as he stretches out next to you, slinging an arm over you and Chara.

“Goodnight,” he says.

“Goodnight, Ree, Frisk,” Chara appends, more softly.

“’Night,” you whisper, blinking up at the dark ceiling.

It takes a while for you to fall asleep. But the soft sounds of your parents breathing and shifting in their sleep lull you at last, that vague sense of unease notwithstanding.

You don’t remember what you dream.


	2. where the light has gone out, our hearts have learned to glow instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bonus warnings for this chapter include: discussion of gender essentialism, briefly implied past sexual assault/csa, other mental health stuff potpourri (small reminder/notice if you hadn't read it anywhere on my blog or in comments that holly is written with [ocpd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_personality_disorder) in mind).
> 
> the nickname "ska" for skateboard girl is borrowed from [These Dark Woods](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5609623) by angelsarenamederika.

The hum of machinery is a low buzz in the background; everything is pleasantly distant. Including physical sensations, though you can take an inventory if you try: the security of being held in place by the familiar straps and buckles, the scent of chemicals, the deep dreamlike rhythm of your breathing and heart. You feel light, like you’re floating in a swimming pool. It’s not that sense of dislocation that comes from dissociating, like your head being stuffed with cotton or feeling like an overfull balloon. Everything is in its proper place and order. Even your sense of detachment has become natural and familiar.

All of your mind is dominated by the steadfast golden glow of your soul. Bright and true, scything through the dark, certain and direct as you always want to be.

“I-I think that that’s p-p-probably enough,” you hear Alphys say from a long ways away, and that glimmering yellow like starlight sinks back into your chest. Coming back to yourself isn’t disorienting—it’s as easy as waking up in the morning—but you still take your time breathing and waiting before opening your eyes, before fussing with the buckles that hold you in your chair and keep you attached to the machinery. Alphys always double- and triple-checks, more because she’s a worrier than because she has a set number of times she _has_ to in order to meet a standard. But her care for safety is part of why you took to her so easily six years ago—when you were just a child with little idea of what was going on, just vague notions of making things right and Chara’s instructions guiding you to volunteer to help.

When you do open your eyes, Alphys is still puttering, looking over each part of the equipment and then rising on tiptoe to crane her neck and squint at her and Sans’ monitors. Sans himself is slouched in his chair, moved aside so that Alphys can see, and so it’s Prase who comes to help unstrap you so that you can get down.

“Everything looks all right?” you ask, frowning a little, shaking your head. Your braids settle heavy on your shoulders, weight like expectations.

Prase raises their eyebrows and swivels over to look at Alphys. They’re smiling only with their eyes, in the way you didn’t used to be able to recognize as a smile. “Well, Boss?”

Alphys blushes and Sans chuckles—easy effortless rhythm. Like hopscotch or mallets on a marimba, like clarinet practice with your eyes closed, fingers over the keywork reporting with the crispness of muscle memory. When you were a kid you gravitated to Alphys and Prase before Sans—part that short or not, monster or not, he’s a grown-up and adult men were especially frightening at first. More that he was lazy and slovenly and seemed not to care for due process. But he tells funny jokes, and the more you watched him the easier it was to decipher his little routines and private rituals.

People’s behavior is erratic and the rules of socialization are vague and constantly shifting. You like it when things are neat. It’s easiest to relax around people when you know where their neatnesses are tucked away—though it’s still more likable in a person when they care about their work and try to do things the right way.

“S-still looking ok-kay,” Alphys says. Only a little stumbling over the sibilants and plosives, and there’s sweat on her face, but she smiles and makes a thumbs up anyway. None of the out-of-control babbling that means there’s something wrong and she’s trying to hide it. “That’s, uhh, that’s all of the units, so we know that they’re f—that they’re f, that they’re working right.” She clenches her hands together and takes a deep breath and sighs, dialing down her emotions. Alphys is so methodical—you love the way that she unravels herself whenever she gets stuck and soldiers on. Brave. Self-aware, too. When you get really stuck you can’t unstick yourself by your own power, still, sometimes. So you admire that in her, a lot.

“We’ll probably have to test them ag-gain when we move them! But! This should b-be enough for today,” she goes on.

“Probably not gonna take that much recalibrating,” Sans says with a shrug. “Might be able to do it with just Prase.”

“I’ll still help if I need to,” you interject, sliding off the chair and onto the green tiled floor. It’s cool against the soles of your bare feet, and you flex your toes while your skin acclimates.

“We, uh—we know we can call on you if we need to,” Alphys says, bobbing her head, “b-but, uhh, let’s get the moving schedule decided on first? I think that, um, we don’t want to disrupt your school schedule more than we have to.”

You still aren’t entirely sure how she found out about helping with the soul machines being higher on your priority hierarchy than school, but it’s useless to protest when she _knows,_ so you just bob your head and remain silent.

This work is about the only disruption of your routine that you’ll forgive, because it’s the mission (the _penance_ ) you were appointed by Chara when it was decided that you would be staying here and living on after all. Other than that—well, the doctors you see have recommended that you alter your schedule in small ways, that you don’t regiment who you visit in the time you designate for possible visits with friends. Everything else is set out in its proper place—school, your part-time job, time for homework. Cleaning the apartment on Saturdays, dishes and laundry on Sundays. Too much deviation makes you irritable, and it took you actual _years_ for you to stop feeling uncomfortable about the blank space where church trips with your parents used to be. Even longer than it took you to get used to not really believing in God or Jesus anymore.

You’ll drop everything whenever Alphys and her assistants need your help. It’s your duty. It’s the right thing to do, and it would gnaw at you to stray from that rightness. But it still can unbalance you, and Alphys at least knows that.

“Okay,” you say, “but if you need me too, I’m happy to do whatever I can.”

The three adults nod. Sans sinks back in his chair, grin wide, apparently assuming that he’s been relieved of all necessity to make executive decisions. Prase pats your shoulder lightly.

“You can go get dressed and gather up all your things then,” they say. “Dr. Alphys and I will write you a late pass to get back to class.”

“Thank you,” you tell them, and you pick up your clothes and jog down the hall to the shower room, where you can lock the door safely.

You came in your uniform—what you still think of as the new one, despite that you changed over to it a little over a year ago. Even after you’ve pulled the hospital gown off and are standing in just your underwear, you hesitate to pull the pants on for a moment. Your elementary school on the surface had uniforms too, even if they weren’t the anime-looking ones that they use at your high school now. Girls wore skirts, boys wore slacks. It was the _rule._

Rules have to be followed, because that’s the purpose of them, isn’t it? Don’t follow laws, and societal structure will collapse. It’s happened over and over again in history.

Rules here in the underground are—they’re different, though. Ska and Fi and Bratty and Catty and Alphys and Astis and everyone, they’ve shown you this. You pull the pants on while holding your breath, do up your fly—and confusion swamps you briefly, the guilt and uneasiness of disobeying versus the comfort and relief of the feeling of pants.

White t-shirt next, and then your gakuran blazer. You do the buttons up one by one.

You wonder, a little, if this deep sense of joy and rightness is what Astis feels when he wears pink or puts on a skirt, dressing what he calls _femme of center._

(“Didn’t there used to be a scale for that, for anyone who identifies as female?” Chara had said then, fascinated, face in their hands. “Feferi to Vriska?”

“That’s High Femme to Stone Butch, you _filthy_ memeing Homestuck, and you know it,” Prase retorted, all loving disgust. Chara had laughed at that, teeth bared, the skin of their nose scrunched up, hair spilling into their face.

You thought that they looked as fierce and vibrant as a saint. Like Joan of Arc, maybe. But you knew that they wouldn’t appreciate being compared to a Christian or to a woman, so you’d kept your mouth shut and watched in silence.)

You fold up the hospital gown and unlock the door, returning to the equipment room. The used gown you leave on the chair; Prase hands you your bag, and Alphys gives you the note you’ll need for your teachers. Though everyone is used enough to your occasional absences on science business that you might even be able to just tell your teachers where you were and be believed.

Best to have the note, though. It’s more proper.

 

 

School is a few quick dashes and elevator rides away, in the city of New Home proper. The building is smaller than the one you’d gone to in Ebott Town, only two stories high, but the population of monsters is probably smaller than that of Ebott Town anyway.

You’ve missed a number of your morning classes, but you’re still on time for math, so you dash through the hallways to your classroom, setting your pass on the teacher’s desk and pulling up a chair to sit with your best friends.

“Helping out Dr. Alphys again?” Fi asks under her breath so as not to bother anyone else. She casts pale green lights over the tabletop when her face and hands are close to its shiny surface.

“Yes,” you tell her, and open your bag to get your textbook out.

“Lucky,” Ska says. She’s got one of the beanbags today, and is slouched back against it with her long purple legs stretched out. She hasn’t even taken off her hat—on the surface you’re quite sure she would be courting detention at the very least, and even in Alphys’ anime stash, she’d be getting sent off to stand in the hallway with buckets or something. But monster schools are a little more relaxed in how they handle students, you’ve found. “I wish _I_ had a human soul and could play hooky to go help with cool science experiments.”

“Holly is _not_ playing hooky,” Fi corrects, “and anyway you know she actually _likes_ school. I’m sure she’d trade with you if you could.”

You let them talk and spread out your things in front of you, textbook and notebook and calculator and pencils. The table is plenty wide enough for you to get them in the best possible arrangement, all lined up together stacked and parallel.

All you have left to study today is math and history, your favorites. Math is neat and clean and perfect, with only individual error present to muddy conclusions. Alphys’ predecessor used math and physics and engineering and magic to power the entire underground, but you love math just for its own beauty, precise and undisturbed and always right. Proofs are the most fun, finding all the right pieces to match up so that they run, like putting a puzzle together.

History is not as neat, but it’s a puzzle too, and it’s more important. When you still lived on the surface your favorite thing to do was collecting and learning the stories that your white teachers never found important enough to tell—the history of indigenous American nations, the uncensored versions of fights for civil and marriage equalities, and stories of brown and black settlers and cowboys. The stories of monsters, both from their time in the underground and the ancient past before, are a perspective that’s been missing from history for too long, and it’s good to have those pieces to fit into the big picture.

There isn’t homework, today. This is convenient, because even setting your job and anime night aside, there is business that you need to attend to later tonight.

You, Ska, and Fi leave together, as you usually do—Ska and Fi take each other’s hands when they think that you’re looking away, and you let them pretend that you haven’t noticed. They’re the opposite of covert—you’ve been able to see it building for ages—but how they decide to approach others with their budding relationship is their business, not yours.

Together the three of you return to the Hotland elevators; Ska walks you and Fi all the way down to the Riverperson’s boat.

“Man, it’s a pain that you guys gotta go to work as soon as we get out,” Ska complains as you make your way down the stairs. “If they can’t cancel school, you should at least cancel your job??”

Fi giggles at this. “I can’t cancel my _job,_ Dad and I _have_ to take care of the restaurant.”

You smile a little and nod. “Working at Grillby’s isn’t so bad. I like having actual income, and it’s nice to help out. You could always apply for a job there too.”

Ska makes a _tch_ noise in the back of her throat and shrugs. “No thanks, I’ve got quality loitering to do back here. I’ll see you squares later.”

You and Fi wave goodbye, and board the Riverperson’s boat to ride back to Snowdin.

When you were younger you wondered whether it bothered your friend to be so near the water, if it’s dangerous or uncomfortable for her—Fi tends to skirt around Waterfall instead of going directly through if she needs to get across for school, and all. But she never seems bothered by the boat rides, even during those times that the Riverperson’s boat sprouts legs (???) and runs helter-skelter down the river surface instead of drifting normally.

Today, as usual, the Riverperson spends the trek humming nonsense songs. Fi tucks her skirt neatly around her legs and gets her phone out, probably to text Ska or her father; you let her do so without remarking on it.

Your braids are very heavy on your shoulders.

The journey down the river past Waterfall passes in cycles of your fingers around your buttons, interrupted by checkpoints in which you run your hands over your bag instead to break the rut.

Eventually you arrive in Snowdin; you and Fi disembark with thanks to the Riverperson, and leave matching loafer prints in the snow over main street. You turn left at the crossroads, pass the tall tree for Gyftrot, and then enter Grillby’s through the front door.

There’s a little memory here that rises up like any other of your rituals, as familiar a gesture by now as touching your old hat where it hangs on the bedpost or the satisfaction of checking the doorknob nine times before you leave your apartment. You, younger, angry and despairing, gun in your hands; Rufus and Papyrus trying to talk you down.

You’d killed one or both of them several times and then wound back and tried again, until they’d convinced you. On days when you’re in a worse mood, you can still remember the sight or the smell of Rufus’ blood and Papyrus’ dust seeping into the snow.

Then you’re inside, and the memory fades.

Since school has only just ended and most of the Royal Guard members stationed in Snowdin are still on duty, it’s pretty quiet here—there are only a few regulars at the bar or loitering by the jukebox, and Grillby is polishing glasses with the kind of easy practiced flair that makes you feel satisfied just to look at.

“Come on,” Fi says, and she leads the way to the changing rooms in back.

You and Fi are the only waitstaff Grillby has, so there’s just your locker and hers here; the changing room is basically your private territory. She’s your friend and you’re as comfortable with her as you are with Bratty and Catty, as you are with family, but it helps that you’ve got your locker door in between you and her and she’s concentrating on putting her own uniform on.

At school, you change in shower stalls or bathrooms instead of in the middle of the locker room. Nobody has ever remarked on it.

You’ve talked to less people about why you’re here than you have fingers on one hand, so it’s not that anyone’s actually _guessed,_ you think. But Chara got a _look_ on their face when you’d yelled at them in the Last Corridor, a look that took you back to being half-naked and sprayed with blood and gore, to your gorge rising and panic pounding in your head. So maybe it’s just that they spoke with people discreetly.

Shake your head, side to side, feel your braids thud and settle, _one, two._

The uniform at Grillby’s is plain and monochrome, and you like it that way: Black slacks, white button-down shirt, black suspenders and tie. Your school shoes are all nice enough to wear here, so you slip your feet back into them as you brush your hands over your pants. Then there’s the little apron belt with your notepad and pens, and you just have to straighten your hair and you’re ready.

Fi wears a neat black skirt and tights instead of the slacks; she wears a pink bowtie that works surprisingly well with the green flames that make up her body. Grillby, like everyone else here in the underground, is fine with giving you choices about these things.

He’s quiet, Fi’s dad—never uses two words where one will do, never uses words at all if that bird monster is around to give their vague approximation of what he’s thinking. But it’s not a bad sort of quiet, the kind that would make the hair on the back of your neck crawl upright in warning. It’s something steadier, something that you waited years to make sure the word _kind_ fit before deciding it does and applying it.

Alphys’ experiments are penance. Grillby’s, you’d avoided from embarrassment until you were friends with Fi, and you only decided to try joining her at work because her father is this kind of monster.

You’re here because you want to be.

So you follow Fi back out to the bar when you’re dressed.

It’s vaguely dancelike, the motions that the three of you fall into on the job, which sort of suits the inoffensive crackly jazz playing on the jukebox. Grillby stays behind the bar unless he has to go prepare someone’s meal, in which case Fi steps in to take his place and keep people’s glasses filled. You polish unused tables, mostly; a little after five Dogamy and Dogaressa wander in and find a place to sit, and you go to get their order, which you pass on to Grillby. Their burgers are ready about fifteen minutes later, and you bring them their plates; you can go back to cleaning then.

Sans shuffles in at five thirty still in his lab coat, climbs up onto one of the bar stools, drinks an entire bottle of ketchup, and falls asleep. Grillby sighs a little and polishes the bar around him.

Papyrus marches stiffly in at five forty-five to shout at his brother and drag him out (you strongly suspect that Prase or Alphys texted him to do this). Grillby sighs a little more and marks something down on the clipboard he uses to keep track of customers’ tabs; you frown at the door a little. Sans makes his payments monthly-ish, but you still do wish that he would pay for his food and drinks (and ketchup) when he’s here. It’s not very polite.

Dogamy and Dogaressa leave the restaurant to return to their posts at six, and the rest of the Snowdin Royal Guard piles in, except Papyrus (who is still on his own shift and anyway doesn’t like even the smell of greasy food here): Doggo, Lesser Dog, Greater Dog, Endogeny, and Rufus. You sigh a little surreptitiously about Endogeny—they tend to leave an awful lot of ichor on the floor and table, but you guess you can’t exactly ban them solely on those grounds. It’s not as if they can help drooling so much when they don’t even really have a face.

Fi takes over serving their table; you switch with her in carrying refills to the very drunk bunny monster over in their booth who’s (as usual) bemoaning the lack of local hot guys.

At six twenty Grillby beckons you and Fi over to the bar; he hands you a chilled bottle of marble soda, and slides his daughter a steaming cup of black coffee. Fi sips from the porcelain cup—you have given up utterly wondering how it doesn’t put her out to consume liquid—while you pop the marble into the neck of the bottle.

“Go ahead and change,” Fi tells you, her little black eyes crinkling in what passes for her as a smile.

“Are you sure? We’re still on for ten minutes,” you remind her.

“I’m sure,” she says, and on the other side of the bar Grillby nods silently. “I’ll take care of Endogeny. I know you’ve got plans to take care of tonight.”

You’re frozen in place for a moment despite their reassurance—it’s not really _proper_ to just leave ten minutes early, there’s a clear right and wrong here in work protocol—but Fi is right, so you nod jerkily and go, navigating around Lesser Dog’s one-monster poker game to get to the back rooms.

Back into the gakuran, then, and you check the contents of your bag to make sure that everything is neat and in its place: A little spell, like counting to ten to make your irritation go away but more effective.

On the way back, you wave goodbye to your boss and your best friend, and to the furry clientele. Rufus says “See you at anime night, Holly!” and you smile at him a little on your way through the door.

Your steps are quick. By the time you reach the Riverperson’s boat you’re running.

 

 

When you were a child one of your chores was dishes, and you would stand on a footstool next to your mother while she scrubbed the pots too big to fit into the washer, alternating between placing things she handed you into the rack and rinsing dishes and cups to stack in the washer. Everything had places they were supposed to go: the utensil compartments went forks, spoons, forks, spoons, knives; bowls and plates had separate rows in the racks. She never scolded you when you mixed things up, but she would sigh as she fixed them, and you hated that, so it made you proud when she looked over your handiwork and smiled instead.

The first fight you ever got into in school was when one of your classmates asked why your housekeeper was coming to pick you up instead of your mother.

You told her more than once that you wished you looked more like her, instead of a doppelganger that had shrunk in the wash and been dipped in bleach; she said that she was glad you looked more like your father. The memories of her face are indistinct now, but you still know for a fact that you have her bone structure—your noses, the shapes of your cheekbones and ears are very similar. All you got from your dad was straight hair and lighter coloring, enough to pass yourself off as white unless you were standing right next to him and his much paler skin.

Your father worked in local government and always came home late. He was strict, but kind; he never hit you or punished you by taking privileges or objects away from you like your classmates’ parents. Instead he would talk very softly and sternly about how you had disappointed him and how your behavior was unacceptable, and asked you to pray with him for guidance as to how to help you grow into the fine young lady he knew you could be. He’d even let you use your mother’s rosary beads, the nice ones she always kept up on the shelf instead of using.

He’d twirl you around in your starched pinafores and shiny Mary Janes on Sundays, and take you out to the range to teach you to shoot, after church. He’d help you tie your hair back and carefully fit the protective earmuffs on to safeguard your hearing.

That night, he took his own fancy jacket off for you to wear and told the guests to go away before handing you off to your mother to get clean and calling the police. He argued for you in court at your hearing while you stared down at the toes of your nice shoes from far, far away.

Your mother worked in a bakery, mornings—because she loved it, not because you needed the money to support yourselves. She would bring recipes and fresh breads home and then you would still find her lifting trays of cookies out of the oven when you got back from play dates with your friends or outings with your father.

Every night she would brush her hair, a hundred strokes, and then brush yours. There was a wide lacquered mirror along the wall of your parents’ bedroom and you would sit side by side on the bed and you watched the subtle flashes of red and brown in her long black hair as the comb ran through it. Your nightgown itched.

You close your eyes and summon up all the memories you can every day, when you’re alone. The heavy scent of cinnamon, sharp in the back of your nose, you reassign to your mother, to her freshly baked churros, painting over the image of Toriel and the taste of cinnamon-butterscotch pie.

Six years ago when you took your hat and the gun and left for the mountain, you tucked a note half under your mother’s placemat. There is no question that they believe you to be dead.

If they still live in Ebott Town—if you can find them, even if they do—you can’t be certain that they will like what they find of you. The girl they had been raising into a little lady, who has turned into an atheist, who loves women when she loves anyone, who wears the boys’ uniform to school.

But it’s only right for you to meet them, let them know that you’re alive, take responsibility for what you’ve done.

There’s a week left. You close your eyes and hold your breath as long as you can.

 

 

Your apartment is well into the mechanical guts of Hotland—to step outside is to step into the great thrumming respiration of the underground’s heart and lungs. Alphys said once that she found it oppressive, but you love it—that sense of being part of a whole, the pulse of the Core, like a medieval choir. All is well.

The click of the lock as you stick your key in the door is satisfying; you lock up behind you as soon as you’re inside, and check quickly—one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three.

It’s a much smaller space than you had growing up—just a loft apartment, apparently where Alphys used to live before she moved into her lab’s second floor itself—but it’s enough space for you now. Any more would be difficult to manage on your own, impossible to clean with the time you’ve allotted, and you loathe mess.

For the umpteenth time today you change clothes—out of your school uniform and into a pair of jeans and a blocky MTT t-shirt, which you’ll swap out for something nicer with neutral colors and a band name scrawled over the chest a little later. Both are ribbed liberally with stripes. It’s October, so you have a little less than half a year left in which you’ll have to wear them. Maybe you ought to have stopped obeying the tradition when you were eleven, when you couldn’t feel like a child anymore, wrong in your skin like a wrist out of joint or an old game’s graphics clipping grotesquely through a wall. But that would simply have been melodramatic, and anyway that was the point, that you were still a child.

You stare for a while at the broken gun that still sits on your bedside table. It can never be used again—Chara’s trident punched three neat holes through the barrel and chamber and grip, so there is no one component to replace to fix it. It won’t kill anyone ever again. But it serves its purpose as a reminder.

So you leave your bedroom with the extra shirt and your bag, and you text Astis in Spanish to remember you’re meeting in the hotel at seven thirty. It’s easier for him to read, and it’s good practice for you if you want to keep that language at all. He texts back _sí, sí_ and a smiley face. You cram the phone back into your bag.

Lock up again, and check—the perfection of three threes, cycles in cycles—and then next door. You knock, but it’s not even fully closed, and the gentle pressure of your fist is enough to push it loose from the frame.

“Come in!” your favorite two voices chorus from inside, and you do.

Bratty and Catty’s loft has a floorplan the exact mirror of yours, but looks rather like Ikea salespeople and maybe an haute couture designer from the 1970s have been at it. Loud wallpaper, loud paint, playfully pastel furniture in solid colors and prints. Every time you walk in here you’re sure that it ought to sear your eyeballs, but for some reason it never really does. Bratty and Catty have some sort of gift for color sense, you’re sure, to understand the subtle rules of these things in a way that you can’t.

The two of them are further inside, both waving excitedly at you. They’ve already set up, you see—they’ve spread a sheet on the floor in front of the wall mirror, and Bratty seems to be in the process of setting a stool down there in the middle of it.

“Holly omg!!!” Catty screeches as you approach. You barely have the time to set your bag down on their kitchen counter before she’s swooping you up in her arms; for such a small round monster, she’s awfully strong. Maybe that comes from years of scavenging things from the Waterfall dump for her and Bratty’s shop, and maybe it’s just that she’s a monster, and therefore made of magic. You’ve never been able to feel muscle on her when she hugs you (which is often).

“Like, chill a little maybe and let the girl breathe,” Bratty says from over Catty’s shoulder, but she’s laughing, sticking her tongue out. Catty stares up at the ceiling and lowers you enough for your feet to touch the floor again. “How’s your day been?”

Alphys said not to tell anyone about the completion of the machines just yet, that she’ll be talking to everyone about that tonight, so though you don’t like to lie you just say “Uneventful” and pat Catty’s arm to make her let you go. “What about you?”

“We got, like, the _best_ new haul,” Catty tells you, grinning pointily, holding her hands up with her fingers spread wide to display every little black-bean paw pad. “There was like… this ancient computer looking thing in the dump, and we totally took it?? Alphys will sooooo flip over our new quality garbage stock.”

“Only the best of garbage for our customers,” Bratty adds. “But like, we should probably get to the point?? Holly’s got anime waiting for her, and we gotta hurry and get to the storefront.”

Catty sighs melodramatically. “Okay okay fiiiiiiiine. But next time?” She points at you with a claw outstretched. “We are soooooo crashing your place and we are _sooooooo_ catching up then.”

She puts her hand on your shoulder, then, and steers you over to the stool, where you sit.

“Do I need to untie it?” you ask, frowning at your reflection.

“Nah,” Bratty says. She sets a hand on your shoulder briefly, firm and cool and steadying. Her reflection has a pair of shiny silver scissors in her hand as she leans over you. “It’ll actually be a little easier to handle like this, tied up. You’re, like, completely sure you don’t want to go to an actual salon instead? This is your last chance.”

You shake your head just a little, staring directly into your own eyes in the mirror. “No, I want you two to do it.”

“Ok then,” Bratty says, and Catty brings a sheet to fasten around your neck. “I mean like, Catty and I do each other’s hair half the time, so it’s not really gonna be that hard. But I still want you to know you’ve got the option, just in case.”

The Holly in the mirror smiles thinly. “You two are like sisters to me after all this time. And I don’t think that I would be capable of doing this at all if you hadn’t supported me. So I want you to do it.”

“You are such a _goober,”_ Catty says. “We love you too.”

“Like, here we go I guess, keep your head still,” says Bratty, and she lifts your left braid off your back. You can’t see it, but you feel the cool metal of the scissors drawing close to the back of your head, and they make a soft whisper as the blades close. There’s a little tug with less strength to it than when you’re combing your hair, and then the weight that you’ve been carrying with you for as long as you can remember just drops away.

Bratty hands your hair still in its braid off to Catty, who holds it up as if to admire it, her fingers kneading at it. It’s starting to come undone, though the rubber band at the end of the braid still keeps the hair bound together.

You squeeze your eyes shut for a moment and then redirect your gaze to the mirror. Bratty cut your braid off short enough for the newly shorn ends of your hair to brush your shoulder. It’s a strange feeling looking at yourself in the mirror like this—you’re pretty sure that the last time your hair was this length, you were literally only about three or four years old. Panic rises in your gut, rapid as the ground rushing up to meet you from a great height. At the same time, relief settles your lungs and ribcage. It’s a very peculiar feeling, like an oil coating over choppy water, or like you’re being ripped in two.

Bratty is watching you instead of going on and cutting your other braid off. Her claws squeeze at your shoulder, sharp enough for mild pain through the sheet and your sleeve. “Are you, like, doing okay?”

“’Cause you look a little pale,” Catty adds, not missing a beat.

“I’m fine,” you answer. “Keep going.”

“That’s chill then,” says Bratty, and she picks up your remaining braid. This takes longer—she repositions the scissors a few times, and cuts in brief quick motions instead of one smooth one. Again the coldness, the little tug, the weight detaching. Bratty hands this off to Catty too; she now has a long chunk of hair for each hand.

In the mirror your hair is even along your shoulders. You take a breath and let it out. There’s no undoing this now. Even if you were sure you wanted to—well, you can’t turn back time at your whims anymore. The timeline here in the underground remains under Chara’s iron control, and really that’s for the best.

“Is this good or do you want it shorter?” Catty asks, and you very nearly startle. “Like, Bratty can just clean it up for you if you want, or we could do whatever.”

“Buzz cuts are probably beyond our ability though?” Bratty goes on seamlessly. “Like. We haven’t got one of those electric razor things. We’d have to hand you over to an actual stylist for that.”

“I don’t want it _that_ short,” you say, and laugh a little, and consider yourself. You don’t doubt for a second that Bratty would give you an inch-long pixie cut if you asked for it. You _could_ ask for it. And it surprises you to think of it with a little curiosity instead of scandalized shock.

You’re not sure you like that change in yourself, which is probably because you didn’t plan it out meticulously or map it, which makes you irritable. You could just leave it like this. But since you’re having them do your hair anyway, it would be foolish to cut off your nose to spite your face.

So you pull up the sheet to free your left hand and indicate maybe a centimeter higher than your earlobes. “How about this short,” you suggest.

“Nice,” Bratty says, nodding so that her ringlets bob in the mirror. “Do you like want it a little shorter in the back or??”

You fold your lips into your mouth and nod. “Sure.”

“Wicked.” Her cool scaly claws comb through the hair at the nape of your neck. “I can feather it, or do it straight across like Frisk has their hair.”

“I don’t know if that bowl cut look would flatter me at my age,” you reply. Frisk is very cute, but you think most of their look they can only get away with because they’re twelve.

Bratty snorts a little.

“Like, it’d look like one of those girls in Alphys’ animes??” Catty puts in, sniggering, and you roll your eyes at no one in particular.

Bratty does the rest of your haircut a lot more slowly, directing you to turn one way or the other and then hold the pose while she snips away.

“I wonder if we could, like… sell this stuff for anything??” Catty says of your braids as Bratty works. “Like it’d be kinda weird to throw them out, but also like… even weirder to keep them??”

“On the surface you could donate your hair to wig makers if you cut it while it was long,” you say. How strange—you’d forgotten that until just now, but with Catty talking about it you remember them talking about it at the beautician’s when you and your mother went to get a trim.

“Ooh ooh, that’s not bad actually??? Maybe we could trade ‘em off to Mettaton’s costume designers. For signed merch!!!”

“Catty,” Bratty says, laughing, “it’s Holly’s hair. At least let her trade it in.”

“I’m fine with you guys doing it,” you interject quickly. Astis’ boss is nice enough as far as bosses go, but you just don’t understand the appeal. “That can be like my payment for having you do this, since you won’t take money.”

“Of course we won’t take money, you lollipop,” Catty says, grinning at you. “You’re, like, our neighbor, duh?? This is what neighbors _do,_ we help each other _out.”_

“Done,” Bratty proclaims then, saving you from having to make a response. She brushes at the nape of your neck, which is now not covered at all. “How’s it look?”

You regard yourself in the mirror, pensive. Your bangs haven’t been touched, and the rest of your hair is only a few inches longer than them now—long enough to tuck behind your ears, but not even reaching the line of your jaw. You look like—like this is your twin from another universe, or something. Like a different person, but not in a bad way. A little more rebellious.

A _lot_ more androgynous. From the shoulders up, you could be a boy or a girl or neither. You turn your head from side to side, examining yourself from every angle you can, and grin a little.

“I _love_ it,” you say.

Bratty and Catty look at each other from behind you, reflected in the mirror, and they both grin at you too.

“Cool,” they say at the same time.

 

 

Even going over your back with a washcloth wasn’t enough to really get rid of _all_ the little hair pieces that stuck to your skin or got caught in your shirt, but you can’t take a shower until later—even if you had the time, that would be against your schedule—so that and a change of shirt will have to be good enough for now. You say goodbye to Bratty and Catty, return to your flat to leave your old t-shirt with the laundry, and leave the apartment complexes altogether.

Every time you come through here at this time of night it makes you glad to live in Hotland—monsters are queued up around the MTT hotel and Core in crowds and lines like ropes. It can take a long time for anyone to make it home if they have to go through these traffic jams.

You duck around a business manticore and edge past a dragon talking on their cell phone, skirt around the tall golden statue of Mettaton in the middle of the lobby, and jog towards the human figure standing by the doors.

Astis notices you coming probably by the sound of your sneakers on the nice tile floor and turns towards you with a smile. Off shift, he’s changed into a fuzzy pink hoodie over a pastel yellow skirt; his masses of crinkly black hair are held back in a neon green scrunchie. He’s soft—the softest human you’ve ever known, and absolutely the softest man. Softer even than the king, although it’s not as if you’ve ever gotten close enough to Asriel to really compare.

“You did it!” He flushes all pleased and red under the light golden brown of his cheeks, and holds out his arms to you. You step into them—Astis doesn’t pick you up off the floor like Bratty, even though he’s taller than her; he does lift you up on tiptoe. Being a cook apparently requires a lot of upper arm strength. He sets you back down quickly, and brings his hands up to frame your face without touching you, giving you the space to step away if you want. “It looks great on you! I mean—of course it does, but _you_ look like you feel great.”

You become aware, like a splash of water, that you’re grinning, and probably have been for quite some time now.

“I do feel great,” you say. “Astis—thank you? I don’t think I could have managed to do this without your and everyone else’s support.”

He just smiles at you. “Holly, all any of us did was help reinforce the idea that—that it’s okay to be the you that you feel like inside, the you that you want to be. That it’s not hurting anyone.”

“Sounds fake,” you say, a canned response you are quite sure you picked up from Prase or Alphys, “but okay.”

Astis chuckles. “Let’s go ahead down to anime night. I’m sure you’re excited to show yourself off.”

You’re certainly something, so you nod to him and the two of you leave the hotel and take a quick left to the general Hotland elevator.

 

 

The lab isn’t quite full when you and Astis arrive, but a lot of people are there already: Aside from Alphys, Prase, and Sans, who work here anyway, Undyne has arrived; so has Liron, whom Astis splits off to go sit with, gone extra doe-eyed and soft at the sight of his partner. Asriel is extremely conspicuous where he sits on the end of one of Alphys’ couches; Chara sits next to him, their arm around Frisk, beside them. They almost look like blood-related parent and child from a distance, if you can’t see the very different bone structure of their faces, or if you can’t tell that Chara’s hair is redder where it isn’t white, or how their skin is a little lighter.

You perch between Prase and Alphys, and Prase passes you a phone so large it has to be Asriel’s, already displaying the pizza place’s webpage. You frown at the order form, considering: You _do_ need to make sure that you’re getting your vegetables for dinner, so with a sigh you give up on ordering extra cheese and check the boxes for ham, green peppers, mushrooms, and jalapenos instead.

The lab doors open again, admitting Innig, Rufus, and Papyrus. You hand Asriel’s phone off to Alphys and stretch your legs out.

“C-cute haircut,” Alphys says, and you smile at her in thanks. “Y-you look—m-more c-confident! I like it.”

“Bratty cut it for me after all,” you tell her. “I felt better with her and Catty than I would have at a beautician’s or something.”

“Very sporty,” Innig puts in: Everyone else has started to notice, too. “I bet it’s a lot lighter—it will be easier to care for now too.”

“Much better for when you’re running around threatening to pound anybody you catch bullying Loox, huh?” Undyne adds with a wide grin, and you feel your ears heat up. There’s some general good-natured laughing, and a few more compliments, and gradually everyone returns to their own conversations peacefully.

“Okay, has everyone gotten a chance to make their pizza?” Asriel calls above the crowd. “Because if not I’m ordering.”

Everyone assures him that their pizzas have been entered. Your stomach growls; the marble soda at Grillby’s feels like it was a long time ago.

“A—all right then,” Alphys says, standing up abruptly and shuffling to stand in the middle of the room, between all of you and the wide screen of the television monitor. “As—as I’m sure! Everyone has heard!!! Already!!!! The s-soul separation and support machines are r-ready t-to go. W—we’re planning, currently, on, uhh, attempting to b-break the Barrier at the end of the week.”

Perhaps taking pity on her obvious nervousness, Sans gets up and slouches to stand next to her. “We’re gonna get all the equipment moved over the next couple days, bit by bit. We’ll need help for that—Pap, Undyne, Innig, Asriel, when you’re around. Otherwise me and Prase and the doctor will be just dragging things up with the assistants’ help.”

Prase also stands, going to join their coworkers. They cross their arms. “For now, I think that it will be best to keep from the general public that we’re going to attempt to break the Barrier, because we could risk serious outbreaks of depression if we fail and everyone knows what our failure is. Say we’re getting close—say it’s another test.”

“That does make sense,” Chara says. “Asriel?”

The king crosses his huge arms and tilts his head to one side. “I don’t like lying to everybody, honestly, but I agree that Prase has a point. I guess we’ll go with that then.”

“During the, uh, actual attempt, you c-can bring family or friends t-to support you if you want,” Alphys says. She adjusts her glasses on her snout and then goes on. “So, uhh, if you think they can k-keep a secret, t-tell them beforehand if you want? I-if not, maybe it would be b-best to only tell them the d-day of.”

Family or friends to support you… Alphys will already be there to oversee the experiment; Astis and Chara will be participating, and Frisk will be there for Chara. You could ask Fi and Ska and even Grillby, maybe, but… you think you’d rather just have Bratty and Catty there.

The briefing complete, Sans, Prase, and Alphys all sit back down. Next to you, Alphys closes her eyes tightly, takes a deep breath, and then exhales.

Pizza arrives not quite ten minutes later, and there’s a great shuffling as boxes get passed out to the right people. Your mushrooms have been grilled, and you breathe in the heady aroma of cheese and tomato sauce and dig into your first slice.

The show you’re watching this week is the same as last time—a show about music Alphys can’t stop exclaiming over, one that (to you) feels a little boring for its slice-of-life mundanity, and has so far focused so much on the disarray of the wind band club and its internal politics that it’s begun to get on your nerves a little. You were in band too on the surface, so it isn’t as though you can’t relate to the subject matter at all, but the story spends most of its time following the bass section and there aren’t any woodwind players in the main cast yet. Needless to say, it’s been losing you.

But your ambivalence is utterly blown out of the water tonight: The first episode you watch starts out a little needlessly heterosexual, but then the two leading girls go on a date??? _And they’re flirting all over the place?????_ This is your favorite show now. You’ve decided. Gay band shows are something you have needed in your life for years and you need this one to start a boom _immediately._

(The next episode is back to politics and boy-girl crushes, but, well. At least the characters are taking music seriously now. You’ll give it more of a chance—it would have to mess up by a _lot_ to lose the points that first one gained.)

 

 

Pizza eaten, anime watched, everyone departs in twos and threes. Rufus and Innig leave quickly; Astis and Liron linger, hand in hand, gazing at each other like they’re doing a shoujo homage; Alphys returns to her computers, with Undyne massaging her shoulders. Papyrus hoists Sans over one shoulder and departs with Prase.

On your way to the door, you look over your shoulder. Asriel is still sitting on the couch, having a quiet conversation with his spouse and their child. It would be improper to sneak closer to try to listen in, and even if it weren’t, Chara would notice you sneaking into close proximity with their husband and would dislike it.

You do think, though, that Asriel looks very serious, and that Chara’s dark circles seem especially deep. Frisk has their back to you, and you can’t see their expression or anything they’re signing.

In the end, it isn’t really your business, even if you are on friendly terms with Frisk, no matter how much you admire Chara. You hesitate for a moment longer, then leave.

 

 

You dream, unusually vividly, of the backyard porch, the apple tree, the wooden playset and plastic slide. Your parents are there—your father gathering fallen apples so that he’ll be able to mow the lawn, you think, and your mother singing along to something on her ipod, just slightly out of tune.

It’s so real that you can smell the late autumn grass, the bonfire scent on the winds, a vague waft of something pumpkin from the neighbor’s open window. You are small, in an itchy dress with a straw hat on your head. It is warm.

Powerful longing overtakes your entire body, and you wish in your dream for a version of Alphys’ machine that would let you send your soul sailing across the Barrier and back through time to this memory, as if on glass wings. But you cannot move back: Only forward.

Your child self in the dream reaches out a hand to your mother, and she smiles and lets you stand with your bare feet atop hers in her socks, dancing with you to a tune that only she can properly hear. But you’re happy, to be included, to be here with your parents on this perfect golden day. Your worries were smaller then—no more real and immediate, but all things solvable before your parents tucked you in at night and wound up your music box. You were _safe_ in those days, safe in a way that you haven’t been able to feel in a long time. Safe in a way that you know you’re never going to feel again.

Well. The little tear of loss is dull now.

Your father sets his basket of apples down on the grass and sits on the steps, laughing and clapping in time with your mother’s song. The glare of the setting sun makes it impossible for you to see her face.

You won’t be able to take your carelessness in the memory back.

But all the same, you will be home very soon.

The dream changes, in the way that dreams do, so that Fi and Ska are somehow with you as you search for Easter eggs in the grass, and that Bratty and Catty are sitting at the table for your tenth birthday, singing along with your parents and your friends.

Soon. The disparate parts of your family, human and monster, will be a whole _so soon._

In your next dream you’re wearing chaps and squinting across a red-brown horizon, bright and colorful as a child’s picture book.

Needless to say, it’s _awesome._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter originally referenced a different anime series, but the storyboarder of the episode in question turned out to be a racist garbage can so it was changed to hibike euphonium instead


	3. we follow the compass of our blood beyond the deepest of oceans.

There’s this movie that you wind up watching at anime night from time to time, one of the ones that someone always throws into the queue whenever no one can decide on what show to watch. It’s about… well, lots of other stuff, but sort of the main motif of the story is about the good and bad parts of making your hobby into your career.

Cooking’s been both for you for just about as long as you remember—something you did for fun, something you did to carry your own weight and pay others back, and also a thing you had to cling to as your means to survive. So there’s only so much that that movie could do for you, as a cautionary tale.

But since you first saw it close to a decade ago, it’s made you think a little bit about the differences between cooking on the job and cooking in your free time.

One of the things that creatives complain about most in terms of their jobs is having to prioritize a client’s requests over what they want to do, or at least it feels that way. But that doesn’t really factor in for you. Even cooking off the clock, you have more fun preparing food for other people than for yourself, so you don’t often decide dishes for yourself. Too, here at the restaurant you often have to make the same dish over and over, but that’s not so different from your off hours either. You like to practice and to experiment.

There are things that you don’t like about working here in the MTT Resort. Health regulations mean that you’ve got to tie your hair back (which you would do anyway, because you’ve got a lot of it and you don’t want it getting in the ingredients) and also wear a hairnet (which you _definitely_ wouldn’t do at home because it’s so stuffy and uncomfortable to try to cram as much hair into one as possible).

And whenever the restaurant is busy, you can’t go out and meet with the people whose food you’re making. If there are any special requests they’ve made about their orders you get those from the waitstaff, which is better than nothing, but you _like_ to make tiny adjustments to your dishes that suit who you’re making them for. Like adjustments to portion size or plating, or changing the balance of spices to subtly influence the food’s taste. Even for regulars whose standard orders you could make in your sleep, it would be nice if you could always put in that little bit of extra effort, to make their days better.

But you still love your job. You did lots of little odd jobs as a kid during the years when you traveled on your own, yard work and cleaning and little one-time things like putting up signs or walking dogs. It was all fulfilling to some extent, but never so much as the times when you were able to work with food, so you knew even then that this was what you would do with yourself if you had the choice.

And the MTT Resort is a nice place to work overall. Mettaton is very silly and sometimes self-absorbed, but he’s good to his employees (usually) and he’s caring and fun. Your coworkers are good people; you count many of them as friends. And working here means you get access to all kinds of high-quality ingredients that you wouldn’t otherwise.

The denizens of the underground’s collective diet is mostly fruits, vegetables, and grains, with occasional fish, shellfish, and snails. You talked about it with Mettaton when you first started working here; according to him, there’s just no way to get sustainable sources of meat here in the caverns. No way to raise and care for large livestock; no wild animals to hunt that would have enough meat to go around. There are waterways in the deep parts of the caves that fish come in through, and fish in Waterfall too; bugs always find their way into the mountain through small openings. But animals are even rarer in the underground than humans.

You miss working with raw meat sometimes. It has a squishy, slimy sort of texture that you can’t really get making patties out of beans and tofu, even as you try your hardest to replicate the feel and flavor of cooked meat with what you’ve got.

You’re looking forward to being able to cook meat again someday soon, but sometimes you worry a little about how long it’s been. Not just in a sense that you’re not sure whether you’ll still be able to work with it, but—because you’ve been polishing your memories for ten years. Maybe by now you’ve forgotten the real feeling of meat in your hands, and the real deal won’t compare to your mental picture anymore.

That’s only sometimes, though.

You prod the rice in its pan with your spatula, shake the pan itself, and lean back against the stool you finally brought out half an hour ago. This is your last order of the day—once you finish up you can join your friends on break.

And—you’ve got plans for later tonight. (Heat crawls up the nape of your neck and through your ears even thinking about it that vaguely.)

The timer goes off, and you turn off all the range burners, mix in the snap peas and steamed carrots with the rice before gently scooping it out onto the wide plate you’d set out. The shrimp, you arrange in the middle of the tall rice pile, a neat circle of them with their tails sticking up; you use a separate pair of tongs to distribute the thick discs of bean-and-tofu sausage in a second circle around the shrimp.

This dish calls for _very_ thick sausages, and you’d swallowed so hard handling them that the box of your larynx had bobbed very uncomfortably, thinking of Liron.

It doesn’t take much to get you thinking of Liron, really; you do wish that you could turn that off while you’re cooking. Especially at work. At home you could probably find times to pry an eye off the stove, but it would be _really_ unprofessional to excuse yourself over and over again here.

Your friends, most of them, would tease you gently for this if they were around. It doesn’t bother you the way it might from somebody else, given that you were all close during the horniest spates of everybody’s teenage years, but it’s still a _little_ embarrassing sometimes.

Liron—God, you know _exactly_ what reaction ze’d have, because you’ve gotten it out of hir so many times before: The bland stare, the raised eyebrow, the minute adjustment of hir thick-rimmed glasses. Then the discreetly raised corner of hir mouth and the dry, _“Sugar, you are a randy boy.”_

The memory alone makes you feel more sixteen than you did when you were _actually_ sixteen and you and Burgerpants had progressed to clueless fumbling. Liron always manages to get you hot.

—You’re getting distracted. Face burning, you drizzle some of the juices the sausages and shrimp were frying in across the entire plate, and then find some oregano to sprinkle on top as a garnish. Then you lean back against your stool again, plant your hands on your hips, and sigh in satisfaction. Finally all done.

One of your coworkers swoops in, grabbing the plate in three of their long spindly arms. “That was your last order, right, Astis?”

“Yup,” you reply to them, smiling. “I’m going to go change and clock out so I can meet BP and my other friends for their break.”

“Good work for today,” they say, using one of their free hands to pat your shoulder. You wave them off, stretch, and pile up your used dishes for whoever’s on duty right now, straightening your work station.

You’re feeling calmer by the time you get to the lockers, and change out of your nice work slacks and shirt and apron. Steamy as it is in the kitchen, it’s a relief to get the hairnet off and let your curls spring freely around your face.

But you stand in your underwear for a minute and run your fingers in between where your fat makes rolls on your sides so you can wick away the sweat that always seems to gather there. Only then do you put on your fuzzy socks and t-shirt and skirt and snap a scrunchie over your ponytail.

You slip through the actual diner on your way to the lobby instead of going through the hotel’s back halls. Sometimes you’d rather be inconspicuous, but today you want to sneak a peek at everyone who’s enjoying the food you’ve made on your way to meet Burgerpants.

All the tables have customers sitting there—some have their orders out already, and some are still waiting for theirs. With the mood lighting it’s difficult to tell where your particular dishes have been delivered, but you can tell that everyone here is enjoying themselves. Right now there are a lot of workers from the Core around, a lot of them regulars. There are a few monsters who aren’t as recognizable that you think are probably workers at Alphys’ lab, because Sans is one of them; he appears to be sleeping on the table. Prase will probably come to collect him before too long, or they’ll send Papyrus to do it.

As you approach the door, you find that Mettaton of all monsters is here, chatting happily at the big receptionist.

You slow your steps and sidle up as obtrusively as you can manage while still not barging into the conversation itself; hopefully they’ll notice that you’re there and your approach won’t be taken as too inexcusably rude.

Mettaton turns his perfectly coiffed head just enough to spot you, and a bright smile crosses his too-handsome-to-be-anything-but-robotic face. “Astis, _darling!_ Done with your shift for the day?”

You smile back and duck your chin. “Yes, sir. I’m going to go meet some friends during their breaks, and then I’ve got plans for the evening.”

“Ohhhh, my!” your very silly and dramatic boss coos, kicking his foot up probably just because it’s fun to do. You might do it too, if your hips were that flexible and you were less self-conscious. “Well, you’re _certainly_ going to need to take your time to prepare for that!” Mettaton winks at you too, leaning harder into his winning pose. “I did mean to have  a quick word with you, Astis dear, but I will endeavor to keep it short. Beauty and romance and friendship deserve your time!”

“I’m sorry for interrupting, then,” you tell the receptionist, who just waves a large fin at you in an _it’s-okay_ gesture. Mettaton winks again, pirouettes, and wraps an arm around your shoulders with a flourish.

Burgerpants complains a lot about how very _Mettaton_ your boss is, but you’re used to it. He’s like this with absolutely everyone, after all, and despite his great big ego, he still went out of his way to help you settle in ten years ago. There are a lot of other employees here at the hotel and on his show staff that are like that—rescue cases, misfits whose dreams Mettaton went out of his way to help come true.

…Well, you guess it’s more that he gives you all chances and sees what you’ll do with them, you amend. Burgerpants was probably hoping for a quicker and easier leap to stardom than his current career path. But Mettaton definitely does rub him the wrong way a lot, and that definitely doesn’t help with their personality conflict at all.

Mettaton struts you over to the entrance of the diner, almost right up to the edge of where the brighter lobby lights filter in.

“Now I’m sure you’re wondering why I pulled you aside here, hmmm?” he says, voice lowered so much that it’s hard to resist the temptation to raise your eyebrows. All you do is nod, though; working with Mettaton for so long has taught you to recognize a rhetorical question when you hear one. “It’s about your work schedule over the next week! Because _naturally_ I got the news straight from dear Dr. Alphys. You will likely need to attend to the, ah, _efforts_ at unpredictable times throughout the upcoming days. While ordinarily I would not be so flexible—business is business, baby!—I think that we’ll have to play a bit fast and loose with your work shifts for the duration of the attempt.”

Mettaton is winking a whole lot as he obfuscates, inviting you to enjoy the over-the-top way in which he refuses to call your scheduled try at destroying the Barrier for what it is. You give him a thumbs up and wink back, making him chuckle.

“Now, just give as much advance warning as you can, and you’ll be able to leave! Just because of the circumstances. I’ll have to make sure everyone else is on call to be able to cover for you, but—” he shrugs his broad shoulders a lot more regally than you’ve ever seen Asriel or Chara do it— “that’s a small price to pay to aid in the freedom of our people and my rise to even greater heights of stardom.”

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” you tell your boss, spreading your hands. “And I really appreciate the help and understanding.”

Mettaton pooh-poohs you as gently as he did when you were eleven. “No need to worry for anything, Astis darling. You’re fulfilling a _very_ important duty, and it is our pleasure and our pride to support you at it.” His arm noodles out extra far to pat you on the shoulder furthest from it. “Now, go and meet your friends, hmmmm? Union-regulated breaks are important to upholding worker morale and thus improving the customer experience! And I have to work on the dance routine for tomorrow’s show. Toodles!”

“See you later, sir,” you say, laughing, as Mettaton twirls away.

Burgerpants is waiting for you out by the front doors of the lobby with a tray of Starfaits balanced in his hands, his foot jiggling, his eyes narrowed, and a hand-rolled cigarette between his teeth that’s still unlit. Mettaton has very strict rules about no drugs on the job, and there’s also a no-smoking policy in most public buildings in the underground, so you bet BP hasn’t lit up for hours. No wonder he’s so antsy.

“Was he bothering you?” your old friend asks without preamble, glaring goggle-eyed after your mutual boss’s sashaying backside.

“No, we were just talking about my work schedule,” you tell him. “Because we don’t know how often I’m going to need to head out to help Alphys with her work this time. I’ll carry that if you want.”

He hands you the tray wordlessly and pushes the doors open. “Whatever. You never know with that narcissistic robot.”

Maybe it’s time to start gently suggesting that Burgerpants try to find a different job again, although he usually gets snappy when you do. He still wants to be an actor and get to be popular, after all, and he’s still convinced that working with Mettaton is the quickest way to achieve that.

“I appreciate you trying to look out for me anyway,” is what you say instead, passing through the door. “You’re a pretty good guy underneath your whole washed-up-21-year-old act, Burgerpants.”

He rolls his eyes and curls a lip, making a _tch_ noise in the back of his throat. “I can’t believe _you of all people_ keep calling me that stupid nickname too.”

You smile and look down your nose at him fondly. “If you didn’t want to be known for your foolish teen exploits forevermore, maybe you shouldn’t have technically stolen food just to try to impress some girls who were never interested in dating you in the first place.”

Burgerpants gives you one of his many famed weird scrunchy faces. “Shut up, Astis.”

Your relationship with Burgerpants has been through a lot of ups and downs over the years since you met through your employment at the MTT Resort; he _is_ still your friend despite everything, and he _does_ have his good qualities, like all monsters do. But sometimes you have to be honest with yourself deep down in your heart that it’s probably irrefutable proof of Mettaton’s goodness that he hasn’t just straight up fired Burgerpants yet.

Bratty and Catty are already outside waiting for you, leaning against the wall on which they’ve spraypainted advertisements for their alley store. Bratty’s got a paper grocery bag dangling off one arm.

“You _better_ not have brought literal junk food from the garbage,” Burgerpants complains as the two of you approach your friends. “You had me bring Starfaits! I paid for them out of pocket!”

“Oh shut up, Grumpypants,” Catty says, sounding unconcerned. “Like, you have an employee discount, you ought to put it to use sometimes!”

“And like, if veggie chips and candy from the convenience store in New Home aren’t fancy enough for you, then you don’t have to have any,” Bratty adds, her stare a lot beadier. She’s got a lot less patience with Burgerpants than you and Catty do.

“I’ll take care of the food tomorrow,” you interject. “I can make lunch boxes for everybody, so let’s not argue?”

“That’s cool with me,” Bratty replies.

“If it’s not too much trouble, I guess??” Burgerpants says, chewing even more irritably on his cigarette. “Like, you’ve got all the shit with her royal doctorness to take care of?? So I guess don’t—don’t push yourself too hard, man.”

He’s grown up a lot since you were kids, you realize all over again, and you smile at him. “I think I can handle it. And I can pay to whip up something quick in the kitchen here if I don’t have time in the morning.”

“You should smoke that thing instead of just eating it,” Catty says sensibly, pointing one chubby forefinger at Burgerpants’ cigarette. “I bet you’re just cranky ‘cause you haven’t had your fix yet, you big crankypants.”

“If I’m _allowed,_ o alley queens,” Burgerpants says with a sarcastic flourish. He still turns his back to fumble with his lighter and start smoking so that none of you will get a faceful when he exhales.

You sit with Bratty and Catty and set out the food while Burgerpants smokes. Up here at the resort, close to the Core, you’re far enough away from the magma down below that it’s not unbearably hot. It can be a little uncomfortable to sit on the ground for a long time, but aside from that it’s one of the best places to eat a quick lunch during break.

Bratty hands you a bag of vegetable chips, and you set the Starfait holder next to the candy bag so that everyone can reach out and take one for themselves when they want. Burgerpants finishes his cigarette and stubs it out before he sits down with everyone; you pull open your chip bag and start to eat. You’d rather have fresh vegetables instead of these, personally, but they do have a really good crunch to them, so you guess they’re nice every once in a while.

“So I guess we’re getting closer to actually breaking the Barrier if Alphys is like, doing heavy duty experiments right next to it now, huh,” Bratty muses. She takes her Starfait but doesn’t drink from it, instead just holding it between her claws. Back when you were dating her and Catty, you noticed that like a lot of reptilian monsters, she has to take eating cold food slow or it makes her tired. “Alphys still likes to play this stuff close to the chest, so like, I wouldn’t expect her to actually make any real announcements until she’s dead sure we’re getting out of here. Maybe not even ‘til the Barrier’s actually like, gone.”

You slurp your own Starfait so that you can avoid answering. Bratty is _very_ shrewd. If she doesn’t already figure that’s exactly what’s going on, she probably at least suspects it. But Burgerpants and Catty would both blab the big news in a second, and that’s exactly what Alphys and Prase _don’t_ want happening, so you can’t compliment her on her intuition.

“It’ll be nice to actually get out of here,” Burgerpants says, stretching. “I’ll have options other than Mettaton for trying to break into the biz.”

Catty laughs, snorting a little. She’s already inhaled her own lunch and Starfait, and is moving on to the candy in the bag. “If we get to the surface, we can finally get our own cat! Like we’ve always dreamed!!”

“You mean like _you’ve_ always dreamed?” Bratty retorts.

“Bratty I don’t _wanna_ have a dream without you in it!!” Catty shoots back, scooting across the ground to fling herself halfway into Bratty’s lap. “Like that’s why we’re gonna marry Mettaton together and everything!!! And cats are real cute!”

“And they’re tasty I guess,” Bratty says mildly, draping one spindly arm over Catty’s middle.

“Will you guys _not_ make passes at each other in front of me,” Burgerpants grouses. “Hot people! So shameless!”

“You have your own boyfriend and love life too, you know,” you tell him, setting your mostly-empty cup down.

“I do! But still!! It’s a _principles_ thing!”

“Oooooh, y’know what we should do,” Catty says from Bratty’s lap, her eyes lighting up. She spreads her paws. “Like, when Alphys’ experiment’s all over and successful and stuff? You should get your boyfriend and Astis should get Liron and we should totally go on a triple date!! To celebrate and stuff!!! I’m sooooooo hype for getting outside this mountain!!”

“That might be fun,” you tell her while Burgerpants keeps grumbling. “We’ll have to make sure all our schedules and stuff line up, but it would be fun. We’ve never all gone out together before.”

And if everything goes well, you’ll have a whole lot to celebrate.

A buzzing in your pocket catches your attention, and you fish out your phone as your friends go back and forth. Caller ID says that it’s Chara, which makes you frown a little—Chara’s notorious for their phone anxiety; they’re almost as bad as Alphys, who would straight up rather charge out of her lab and find you in person than communicate over voice instead of text. Even with you, they usually text you to see if you’re available to talk before they actually call you. This is very weird.

“Hang on, I’ve got to take this,” you say, holding up your phone. Bratty and Catty raise their eyebrows in perfectly mirrored motions, and Burgerpants flaps a hand at you as if to say _well go on then._ You push yourself up and jog over to the other side of the resort, hitting the accept call button.

“Astis?” says Chara from the other side.

“Yes, I’m here,” you answer, trying not to pant too loudly. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m sorry for calling out of the blue like this,” they reply, and you frown to yourself. Is it just you, or do they sound… sort of tired? “There’s something Asriel and I wanted to discuss with you, for… after this experiment concludes. You and Papyrus, and some of the other humans. Will you be available this afternoon?”

“I ought to be,” you say. “I have plans for this evening, but my afternoon is pretty free.”

“In that case, I’d appreciate it if you met us up by the castle in an hour or so,” Chara says. It’s definitely not you—they have that spaciness and grit to their voice like they haven’t slept enough. You know that tone pretty well, from early mornings listening to them read; on days like this they were usually surgically attached to a cup of tea or coffee. “You may have to wait around a bit even when you get here; I’m sorry. We haven’t heard back from Innig yet because she’s still on shift.”

“That’s fine,” you tell them, and then hesitate only half a second before adding, “Chara, are you okay? You sound sorta out of it.”

“What?” Chara’s quiet for just long enough that you consider repeating yourself in case they were blanking and didn’t pick up part of it, but then they continue. “No, I’m fine. This has just been a lot to coordinate, so Ree and I are busy.”

“Make sure you rest sometimes,” you say, leaning back against the resort wall so you can shift your weight.

“I can rest when we’re free,” Chara says so dryly that you can tell they don’t expect to get much rest then either. “Really, I’m fine. I’m not pushing myself that hard. It’s actually more like I wish I had more time to get out of the house and join weapons practice as a stress reliever. Lots of paperwork and planning to do.”

That still sounds like they’re pushing themself too hard to _you,_ but it doesn’t really fall to you to mother Chara. Your few attempts at doing so in the past almost went in disastrous directions, and would have if Chara themself hadn’t gently stopped you.

Also, they’re twice your age, and it’s pretty hard to get anyone middle-aged or older to actually accept your mothering with grace. Oh well. Maybe you can at least put a bug in the ear of someone they actually _would_ listen to, like Asriel or Prase.

So “Well, don’t overdo it” is all you actually tell them.

“I won’t. Don’t _you_ overdo it either,” they say, surprising you. “Ruling a kingdom is stressful, but at least I don’t have to juggle a full-time job with a Hott New Relationship and being the local mom friend. You’re young, but you’re still risking burning out again.”

“I know. I’ll be careful, so you don’t have to worry about me on top of the whole kingdom.” You shift the phone. “Also, please tell me I’m imagining it that I heard ‘hot new relationship’ capitalized and misspelled.”

“Oh good, I was worrying that nuance wouldn’t carry over voice,” Chara says mildly, and you all but double over laughing. “I’ll see you later, Astis.”

“See you,” you reply, and they hang up.

By the time you get back around to the other side of the resort, your friends appear to have finished eating, and are cleaning up.

“Gotta get back to work,” Burgerpants grunts, dusting himself off. “Enjoy your time off today, man.”

“We need to get back to the store too,” Catty says, handing you your mostly-finished Starfait and veggie chips. “But like, what did Chara want?”

“Dunno,” you say. “They said to come see them up at the castle in a bit, so I guess I’m gonna head over the long way.”

“See you then,” Catty says, at the same time Bratty points to you and says “Naturally we want the deets later.”

“Naturally!!!” Catty adds, laughing.

“I’ll tell you what I can,” you promise, and wave to them as they head down the alley. You finish up your lunch and carry the empty containers with you into the lobby, depositing them in a trash can on your way to the main elevator.

 

 

The silver-white streets of New Home teem and bustle in the early afternoon, packed with monsters at work, returning to work from their breaks, or taking their children home from school. There’s an elevator that goes straight from the Core to the castle, and you’ve taken it before when you’re in a hurry or when you’re with Chara, who overwhelms easily and hates to be crowded; you like the long way, though. There are so many more people here, and it’s so much friendlier than the cities on the surface, where you had to compete with other people for safe places and it was usually more than your life’s worth to be spotted by a cop.

It’s strange to be so excited to leave, sometimes. All the humans agree that it’s nicer here in Mt. Ebott’s womb, even with the crowding and the depression and the worries of food shortages. But it’s still time to leave. There aren’t only bad things and bad people, outside; monsters deserve a place on the surface if they want it, and all the fallen humans are going to have a much easier time amongst your own kind now with money and connections in the monsters’ nation.

There’s any number of things that you could do in the future. Get a job at a human restaurant, or stay on with Mettaton, who’s already got very lofty plans and backup plans by the dozens laid out for becoming the whole world’s top idol. Find a home, or travel. And you’ll have time to think about it, too, because even if the Barrier plan goes off successfully, it’s going to be a lot of politics and a lot of time before monsters are integrated. You don’t doubt that Chara called you to talk about something to do with all that, although you’ve got no idea what you can add to that side of things.

So: You meander your way up main street, scope out a few tiny stores like the one that Bratty and Catty run, toss a few gold pieces to a trio of young monsters playing an accordion-and-harmonica piece on the corner. The castle glows resplendent and white on the horizon, but you have time, so you take it.

You’ve just sat down at an empty bench near the big age-worn fountain with statues of Asgore and Toriel when you spot Holly, probably on her way home. If it weren’t for how few humans there are down here you wouldn’t have recognized her—the new haircut’s just that different. But she looks lighter for it—she’s standing straighter, like there’s less weight on her back, and she’s less grim too.

She notices you too, and stops and waves her friends on without her, trotting across the cobblestones up to you.

“Pretty unusual seeing you up here,” she says.

“Nice to see you too,” you say, and she sighs a little. You grin. “I got a royal tea summons. Probably a tea summons. There’s usually tea there, anyway.”

Holly raises her eyebrows at you. “You didn’t _do_ anything, did you?”

“Nothing I should be in trouble for. Asriel and Chara wouldn’t leave me hanging if I was, and apparently Innig and Papyrus are also invited, so.”

Holly shrugs and sits, setting her bag down in between you.

“How’s the haircut?”

She startles a little and then rewards you with a grin, reaching up with pale fingers to play with the very short ends of the cut. “I’m still getting used to it, but it’s nice. It’s quicker to wash. I think I should’ve expected that, it’s common sense, but I didn’t. Now I’ve got extra time in my schedule and I’m not sure what to do with it. I’ll think of something. Only I miss a little bit how heavy my braids were when I shook my head.”

Holly used to do that a lot, you realize. You thought it was a twitch or a nervous habit, but it does make sense as a stim too. “It’ll grow, if you want to get it to where it’s heavy again.”

“I think I might just keep it this way.” She turns from you and stretches out, face squinched up tight a moment before she relaxes again. “I do like it, a lot.”

“I’m real glad.” You sort of lean sideways, against the fountain and towards her, close as you can get to her shoulder without touching. Holly doesn’t like contact, especially not contact she hasn’t asked for, so it’s best to just make an offer and leave it open for her to handle how she prefers. She doesn’t lean into you, but she also doesn’t move away. “How have you been today? With all the… experiment stuff.”

“Everything else is normal, so it doesn’t feel particularly different yet. I think that people have started to pick up on the mood on a level that even they haven’t noticed, though. There’s a lot of energy in the city today.”

She’s right. You breathe in thoughtfully and push back against the fountain harder, so that you can stretch your feet out for a minute. “I guess so.”

“Alphys is going to keep having me do tests all the way up through the end, I think. She worries a lot and it’s either me or Prase, depending on if she needs help with the machines or not.” Out of the corner of your eye you see Holly turn to look at you, dark brown eyes boring into you with level precision. “Have you thought about who you’re going to ask to come with you?”

The question takes you absolutely off guard and it must show on your face, because Holly rests her elbows on the fountain lip and stares at you all the harder.

“I’m asking Bratty and Catty because the two of them and Alphys are the closest thing to family I’ve got down here,” Holly goes on, as if she didn’t interrupt herself to stare at you for a solid half minute. “What about you, Astis?”

“I… haven’t thought about it, no,” you admit. “Liron and Chara are both going to be participating. Papyrus will probably be there for Prase. You’ve got Bratty and Catty. I don’t know that I really _need_ to ask anybody all special.”

“You have a few hundred friends who’d be more than happy to provide moral support,” Holly says. She lowers her voice to add, “We’re going to get our souls ripped out of our bodies and used as a power cell. Alphys has made it as safe as she possibly can, but if you _want_ to have somebody there specifically for you, I think you’re as entitled as the rest of us.”

“Guess you’re right,” you say. “I will think about it.”

Holly extracts her phone from her bag and frowns at it. “I have to go—I have homework to do. But I’ll see you later.”

“Later,” you agree, waving to her as she gets up. Holly flashes a smile at you and jogs down the street, disappearing around a corner.

You check your own phone. It’s been something like forty minutes since you left the resort; you should probably hurry up too.

Luckily the bustle is bustlier down in the plazas and the marketplaces, so there are less people to dodge through on your way into the castle. And you know very well where all the elevators here are, because you spent a lot of your free time as a kid underfoot in the castle kitchens, learning from whoever was there or listening to Chara read. You say hello to a few palace workers, nod politely to some of Asriel’s council members, and find an elevator that’ll go straight up to the royal living quarters.

Once you’ve hit the button, you get your phone back out again, and thumb through your address book so that you’re looking at Mettaton’s number. You don’t want to call him if he’s on set or anything, so you just text him ‘MAY I CALL PLS?’ and then rest back against the elevator wall with a sigh.

You nearly drop your phone less than a minute later when your ringtone jangles out cheerfully; fingers shaking, you hit accept call and raise it to your ear. “Hello?”

“Astis, _darling!”_ Mettaton trills from the other end.

“I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything,” you say, thoroughly caught off guard.

“Of course not! And you know I’ve always got time for you, dear. What is it?”

“Um—uh. This might be a little sudden, and weird, but—the thing Alphys is having us do at the end of the week?” You shift your weight awkwardly, pressing the toes of your shoes into the elevator tile. “She said we could have friends or family with us, and—I dunno, you’re kind of the closest thing to a legal guardian I’ve got, so—”

“My _dear,_ dear boy!” Mettaton sounds downright delighted—almost _choked up,_ or as close as his synthetic robo-voice can get to that sort of tone. “I would be _honored!_ You just let me know when the fireworks are happening, and I’ll clear my schedule.”

Alone though you are, you duck your head as you smile and pull your free hand away from your hair, where your fingers were starting to pick. “Thanks.”

 

 

The first time you visited the Dreemurrs’ living quarters, you were completely gobsmacked. Knowing they were royalty, you’d expected gaudy furnishings like something out of a fairy tale or a picture book. But the six little rooms of their private suite look no fancier than a nice upper-middle-class human house. It’s still a lot nicer than anywhere you ever took shelter for longer than a day or two before you came to the underground, but it’s the kind of nice that doesn’t feel like it would be completely unobtainable without some sort of godly windfall.

Case in point: Your own flat has things that are almost as nice as this. Not too bad for someone who spent nearly half his life on the streets in between homeless shelters and people’s garages.

The first thing you see in the Dreemurrs’ living room is the king himself emerging from the kitchen with a pastry tray to set on the table. Asriel Dreemurr commands attention wherever he goes simply by virtue of being enormous and heartstoppingly handsome and a Boss Monster, even when he’s wearing a plain green sweater and black sweatpants instead of formal robes and doesn’t have his crown on.

“Oh, Astis,” he says, fixing you with a meltingly gentle smile. “Just go ahead and sit wherever, we’re still waiting on Papyrus. I’ll get you some tea.”

“Sure thing,” you tell him, and take a few more steps inside as he retreats to the kitchen.

Innig is sitting at the table, tall and poised and gorgeous in some velvet-and-chiffon vision that makes her look like dresses were invented solely to decorate her muscular body. Since she’s off work she’s swapped her usual tiny earrings for fancy dangles. She’s so gorgeous you don’t know how Rufus stands it, being in love with her and being her partner and everything. If you had all those feelings on top of just normal friendship and aesthetic admiration, you’d probably keel over and die the minute you lay eyes on her.

Chara’s sitting in the chair by the fire, knitting very admirably around Frisk, who’s mostly curled up in Chara’s lap, or at least giving their best effort at it even though their legs are sort of spilling out over the chair’s arm. Frisk looks… sort of anxious and unhappy, you think, and they’re holding Chara tightly; for Chara’s part, they’ve got vicious dark circles, and they don’t show any discontent at their child getting in the way of their needlework.

Maybe Frisk’s having a bad day. They seemed a little lackluster last night too, although you didn’t ask then. This happens, from time to time—Frisk gets anxious and paranoid and needy to set even Chara to shame, Chara whose self-destructive depressive spirals you’ve seen just a handful of times over the past ten years. They always get better, though, after a good few days’ worth of nurturing from their parents and sometimes their friends. That’s probably how this will go too.

So you say hi to Chara and Frisk; the former says hello back, and the latter lifts one hand from around Chara’s middle and waves hi back with a little grabby-motion flap of their fingers. Then you go take a seat at the table in one of the corner chairs, and thank Asriel when he brings you a teacup.

About five minutes later you pick up on the sound of distant tramping footsteps getting closer and closer, until the front door opens and closes smartly and Papyrus emerges in the living room, striking a pose.

“Lo!!!” he proclaims winningly, one hand stretched up towards the ceiling and the other planted firmly on his hips, which he’s cocked to the side. “The Great Papyrus arrives with a crash and a bang, precisely on schedule!!!!”

Asriel laughs, not unkindly, while Innig hides a smile demurely behind her teacup and you and Frisk applaud. Chara is smiling as they set their knitting on the mantelpiece shelf, wrapping both arms around their child.

“Thank you all for coming,” they say, and then they turn and look to Asriel, who nods.

“We’ve got an offer for the three of you,” he says. “Chara and my parents and I have had a lot of plans laid for a future where we escape this mountain for a long time, but a lot’s going to depend on where the humans are at and there are roles to be filled if we’re going to handle things diplomatically. We’re going to need ambassadors, and we think that the three of you might be good for that kind of job.”

You set your teacup down with a clink in its saucer so that you won’t drop it all over the table. Across from you, Innig straightens, her eyebrows drawing in a little.

“I’d like to hear a little bit about why you chose us,” she says, and there’s—there’s something in her voice that makes her _sound_ even more high-class than she usually does. Like she’s being extra-careful with pronunciation or something. You could struggle for a minute on every word and you could never make English come out that perfect and clean.

“Ideally we need both humans and monsters on this task, to appeal to the possibility of coexistence,” Chara says. They sound very tired again. “Papyrus is very winning and friendly and good at defusing conflicts. Innig, you know more about human high society than anyone else here. Your manners are pristine and you have the best bullshit detector of anybody I know. Astis, you’re a natural born peacemaker, and I think that you have something special to gain from a job that would require you to travel North America, do you not?”

Their dark red stare bores into you with no quarter, and you find you can barely breathe.

“It’s a really big responsibility, and we understand if you don’t want any part of it,” Asriel continues, his light brown eyes serious. “It’s also going to require you to go through a lot of pretty intensive training over the next few months. So if you need some time to think about it before you’re willing to accept or not, that’s okay. We do want to know what your decision is before we try to break the Barrier, so that we’ll be able to ask other people, but you’ll have until the end of the week.”

“I’ll do it!” Papyrus says immediately.

All five of you stare at him with varying degrees of wonder and incredulity.

“That was a fast answer,” Asriel says after a moment.

“Yes, because I am very certain! That! This is a thing that I want to do!!” Papyrus goes on, clapping the bony tips of his fingers together—tension or excitement. Both, you think, and you’re pretty sure that you’re right. Papyrus is one of your oldest friends, you personally taught him how to cook, and you spent a long time watching him very closely as a kid, back in the years that you had a horrible unrequited crush on him, before you realized and accepted that Papyrus doesn’t really do romance. “I have grown up all my life around humans, and I have made friends with every new human who comes here! So!! I am what some may call a bit of an expert at human-friend-making!!! And also—I know how very important this is, and I would very much like the opportunity to help. I promise that I will be a very winning mascot!!!”

“Your family is going to be very proud of you,” Chara says. Then they stop and smile. “Okay, no, I can’t kid you, Sans is going to shit himself with rage before he works himself around to accepting that you’re a grown adult who can make your own choices about your future. But Prase and your father are going to be very proud of you.”

“That is I think the best that we could hope for,” Papyrus concedes, nodding.

Innig swirls the tea in her cup for a moment before looking up past you to Asriel. “You have a tentative yes from me, too. I agree that strategically I’m a very good choice, because I did grow up in that sort of world when I was a child. But I still want some time to think about it before I really commit.”

“Please, take your time,” Asriel says, shaking his big head. “I know that in your case we’re asking for a lot.”

You hold your silence, until you realize that everyone has turned and is looking at you.

“I think…” You drop your gaze to the table. “I think that I’m going to have to think about it for a little while, too.”

 

 

“Go on ahead back, son,” Gerson says with an extraordinarily big and unsubtle wink, and waves you without ceremony in past the storefront back through the house. “Hope you two have a good evening! Wahaha!”

You scratch the back of your head, embarrassed, and slip through.

The home that Liron shares with hir sister and guardian is a lot more whimsical than yours, you think; some of that’s due to the three of them living in a grotto in Waterfall’s cave wall, and more is because that grotto is inhabited by three people with extremely different taste in home décor. Gerson’s rooms are utilitarian, Innig’s are girly and charming, Liron’s are neutral with sober colors, and the communal living spaces they share look like someone’s filming a movie on the theme of War of the Knickknacks. Boxes of stock for Gerson’s store are tucked away into the corners, too, but despite the clutter it’s always very clean.

Liron’s not in the living room; when you poke your head into the kitchen ze’s not there either. You creep up the short flight of stairs and cast a hand along hir bedroom door; it swings open with only the tiniest of creaks, and there ze is.

Your heart gives one great pound and a million emotions rise up in you to look at hir: The rough profile, the perfectly smooth long brown hair tied back low, the drab and stereotypical hot-librarian sweater vest and crisp slacks and button-down shirt. Ze turns to look up at you from the heavy book in hir hands, about three-quarters here but just a little bit gone somewhere nobody could ever reach hir. Which is quintessential Liron, and which makes voracious heat froth up in your stomach and your loins.

“Hey, Sugar,” ze says, with that low and lazy half-smile, slipping a bookmark into whatever ze’s been reading and setting it down on the mattress. Ze holds hir other hand out towards you; you step into the room and push the door shut behind you and reach out to take it. Hir fingers rub up against the soft part of your wrist, and your skin prickles with gooseflesh. You can feel hir pulse slow and relaxed where your fingers brush the heel of hir hand, too. You could combust, or melt. “Didn’t keep you waiting, did I?”

“No,” you reply, suddenly breathless, and you knit your fingers through hirs like you could bind yourself to hir forever and a night.

“Good to hear,” says Liron, and ze shifts towards you, bringing hir free hand up to splay across your cheek, pulling you down.

 

 

You’ve been in love so many times in your life—Papyrus, Burgerpants’ current boyfriend, Burgerpants himself, Bratty and Catty—but it’s never felt so intense, like a force of nature, like the veins of deep magic that govern the monsters’ world.

You’ve never been so afraid of losing what you have, until now.

 

 

Later you walk through Waterfall together, traversing fields of Echo Flowers and picking up umbrellas to cross the rainy passageways until Liron finds a spot ze likes to gaze up at the jeweled cave ceiling.

“Asriel and Chara offered me a position as one of their ambassadors today,” you say at last, planting your hands behind you and stretching back, resting your weight back as you sit.

Liron turns to face you instead of staring upwards and makes a low neutral noise of encouragement.

“I think that they’re right, and that I would be a good choice,” you go on carefully. “I think that with Papyrus, and Innig if she agrees too, I would be able to do a lot of good. And—Chara knows. When we get out of here, I want to see if I can find my family. We all have gold; I could get them off the streets, if they still don’t have a place to live. If they’re—if they’re still alive, they’ll be getting old, and living homeless isn’t kind to an old body.

“There’s just—there’s a lot that I want to do, and it’s all pulling me in different directions. We’re human, we’ve only got so many years that we can live. I want to keep cooking, I’m _happy_ with my job with Mettaton, and… traveling the country and the world isn’t going to be anything like the quiet life I want with you, that we’ve talked about before.”

“You still have time to think,” Liron says.

“I do. But—I don’t think just sitting around and waffling is going to help me at all. There’s _so much._ Having my own restaurant, and years to study at a mosque to make up for what I ought to have had with a father I never knew, and living with you in the bookstore you want—I’d need as many lives as a cat to do it all, and each of these things is so important to me that I don’t want to let _any_ of them go.”

“Rearrange,” Liron says, and you turn to look hir full in the face. “Some of these things you could, maybe, put off until later. Some can only be done now. If you don’t think the ambassador job is right for you then you can tell Asriel no and he’ll get it. There are other ways you could look for your family, if you don’t want the extra responsibilities. Could probably help if you wanted. Or ask any of your other friends, if you don’t want my potential bias.”

“I guess.”

Hir gaze slides away from you and back up towards the fake stars, and you look at hir pale gold hand next to your brown one on the rocks below you and fumble in your head with different ways to say _but you’re the one thing I absolutely don’t want to let go_ and _I want to know which if any of these possible future plans would be dealbreakers so I know how to prioritize them_ without sounding so soppy and dependent that Liron would just give you one of hir blank looks while you sat in silence with your heart closing up like a grape drying into a raisin in time-lapse.

“Would be a good excuse for trying to find a magic teacher,” Liron says then, so out of nowhere that your brain’s left scrambling for context.

“Huh?”

Ze turns back to you, nonplussed, and _God_ but ze’s beautiful, all craggy lines and perfectly trimmed whiskers. Hir glasses are sliding a little down the slope of hir nose.

“Traveling,” ze says, like it’s obvious.

Your heart literally skips a beat, and your breathless lungs hold still for a long enough moment that you start to feel faint, like you have to slow your whole existence down to make sure that you heard what you just heard and you’re not jumping to any conclusions.

Then Liron twists hir upper body to face you and frames your face in hir long lean hands, and you breathe, and your heart beats. If everything in the world is chemical reactions, your chemicals are certainly reacting to hir presence, and if all existence is just atoms, yours are buzzing like to come apart. You feel like colored light bursting, or like spice thick on the tongue—the kind that makes your eyes water and your nose run and pins and needles crawl all over your skin with its strength and its boldness.

“We’ll figure it out,” Liron says, very calmly, as if ze _isn’t_ overturning your whole universe like it’s nothing.

“The only thing I _want_ to hold on to for sure is you,” you manage, and lean in to trace kisses down the line of Liron’s cheekbone, to trace the edge of hir perfect sideburns with your lips.

Losing people is the most awful sensation in the world, and there are a million ways to lose people and you feel like you’ve experienced nearly all of them in the twenty-one years you have lived. Your hair is still standing on end, a little, with the sheer selfishness of your confession, but—you have to put your dreams into words or else you’ll be letting go of them, and that’s losing them too, just in a way that lets you pretend you have control when you don’t really, when no one ever does.

Liron holds your wrists. Runoff patters, distant.

“D’you—do you want to come back to my place tonight,” you say right up against hir mouth. “Less of your granddad lurking around the storefront. I’ll make dinner. You can stay.”

In the dark of Waterfall Liron’s eyes look black. Ze blinks slowly; you can’t look away. “All right,” ze says. “And we can work this out tomorrow and the day after too. Whatever you need.”

“Great,” you say, and your voice cracks a little, making Liron grin.

“God, Sugar,” ze says, as _here_ as ze ever is, hir fingers playing strange rhythms on the nape of your neck, “you really are every bit as much of a goober as your friends like to call you.”

Ze turns hir head to the side and crushes hir mouth to yours, and it’s quiet for a long while except for the rain, the faint rustling of your clothes, and the wet sounds of your kiss.

You feel tied to the moment here, properly rooted instead of drifting; held still by kind hands. Possibility seems, if only for this moment, like splits in a road before you that you can consider at your own pace, instead of roaring down rails with a switch to flip for your exit.

If this much is certain. As long as this is certain.


	4. we howl even into the silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bonus warnings for this chapter include: disordered/magical thinking, derealization, and other mental health stuff potpourri (small reminder/notice if you hadn't read it anywhere on my blog or in comments that liron is written with [spd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid_personality_disorder) in mind).

Books talk about how difficult it is to accustom oneself to another’s space and especially to sleep in a bed that is not one’s own possession, but you are your own lodestone and the master of all space you inhabit. Fear and discomfort are vague myths and rather difficult to believe in if you are not feeling them in the moment. You are untouchable and distant as the pelagic depths, safe as you would be anywhere, as you are everywhere.

Cocooned in time and space and the distant fibers of the world, the irascible vagary of numeric code and its idiosyncrasies, you cannot be quite sure whether you are awake or dreaming until: Oh, a soft hand on your wrist. Surprise ripples through you, not unlike a puddle disturbed by a rock thrown or the jumping of a frog. Awake, then.

You expect the fingers threaded through yours, are already anticipating the sensation of Astis’ fleshy palm and the thickness of each digit spreading yours apart, heat that crawls into your groin. He surprises you again by instead walking his fingertips up your arm, pushing the hair crossgrained and spreading goosebumps after them. You turn towards his weight pushing down the mattress, only your head and not the rest of you. Instead of wishing you a good morning or even kissing your face, the fingertips skim diagonal over your chest and trace the lines of your throat, pressure on your larynx that’s almost uncomfortable, lifting the shelf of your chin.

“Sugar,” you say. Your voice is even. You’re tenting your partner’s bedsheets wetly, and he makes the springs beneath you both creak as he pulls them away.

The stereotype for people like you, or so crusty psychology books have informed you, is to have a strong dislike for the closeness of sex, the sweat and the slime and the grunting and all the other varied and sundry mundanities and indignities. Your opinion of the act is more unformed; if one regularly forgets about one’s own body to begin with, then of course one will forget coitus from time to time.

But there is value, for _you,_ in its mundanities and indignities. Even more than the pleasurable sensations, you think; a hand is enough to suffice for _that._ There are things in the world that you enjoy much more. But in the knowledge of what your body responds to. In the awkward crash of flesh itself, too stark and too physical for you to drift away. And Astis is tactile, eager in general as well as eager to please. So the pleasure in and of itself is more pleasant than not.

It’s a very different experience than what you knew before, almost as if a different genus, and the concept of sex itself only a higher order or class, a distant relation. Muffet would wink half her eyes and call it _fooling around_ but she was always very precise, deliberate, the placement and pressure of spun spider-silk ropes, each body-to-body touch purposeful. Warmth enveloping your groin all the stronger for the minimalism of skin on skin. Astis is all contact, imprecise and gentle, a honed-in focus on comfort and sensation, a dialogue of interconnection. Hands and weight and skin and a warm mouth.

You open your eyes, cast a hand out: Smooth sheets warm from body heat. Bare skin, not slick yet with sweat but with that particular texture of sweat that has mostly dried but yet pulls at the fingers, a demand to slow and stay that is easily disobeyed but not so easily ignored. Then: curls, thick and coarse, embracing your hand as you cup the curve of Astis’ skull.

Astis turns the sheets down and kisses your stomach. Sharp intake of breath. He keeps acting in ways that you cannot predict. You love, have always loved, surprises; if you do not expect a thing that happens, it has not happened because you expected it to. There is magic thrumming in your body and you do not know the bounds of its power. You can never really be sure that you do not shape the world around you subconsciously, like a child’s fantasy story, unless the world is defying all possibilities you had considered.

Your attention had been straying, but Astis begins playing with your navel, and back your mind goes to him like magnets. You would have expected him to trail kisses up or down, or sit up and move on to something else.

“Sugar,” you say aloud again, and his sloe-black eyes flick to your face, and his lips curve in a smile against your skin.

“What do you want to do?” he asks. He has a mild voice: soft, calming, a stubborn Spanish accent that has not been sublimated even after years in a kingdom that predominantly speaks English. His breath is a sharp chill against the wet marks he has left on your skin; it causes your hair to prickle in a pleasant way.

It is difficult to shrug lying this way, but you make an effort to do so. “Surprise me.”

 

 

You surprised yourself and him with the nickname two years ago; it is at once affectionate and ridiculous, and spurred on by some wild temporary insanity you had explained to him the joke. Sugar, from sugar maple; Astis more directly means “steeple” but is still a cultivar of _acer saccharum._ And also from the red and gold of its leaves in autumn, matching the golden undertones of his light brown skin, and for his sweetness.

It had made him laugh: “That’s so _pretentious,”_ he said, light winking against the dark near-black gray of his irises, the mole beneath his eye lining the crinkles of his face. “And cute? Really cute. I love it.”

Sometimes the fact that he was a real person—not in the sense of his existence, alive and breathing, but in the sense of his _mind_ and his feelings and his perception of reality utterly alien from but equally vivid to your own—struck you in all its oddity like a lead weight to the forehead, blunt and unsubtle and caring nothing for the rude shock to your sensibilities. That was one of those times. Astis you have known since he first came to the underground, amiably intrusive and undeterred by what your sister calls your _space case_ demeanor; he has been a distant fixture in your life since, something you would study with the same disinterested eye you turned upon the make of a light fixture, or text swimming upon a disintegrating page. And yet simultaneously he is a Real Person, one whom you had delighted. To borrow a trite phrase, you could not make heads or tails of it.

The nickname stuck.

 

 

Home is almost directly across from the Riverperson’s stop, and when you walk into the bathroom your hair is very slightly still damp. Innig is blocking the sink, taking up the entirety of the space much like a very jealous dragon. She is shaving. If you had got back ten or even five minutes earlier you would have been in time to have a turn first, as your own self-maintenance is nowhere near as arduous. Your sister is impossible to satisfy. Her light palms are white and bloodless about the razor handle: A feat. She passes her hands across the skin of her face and throat, finds a missed hair, and begins the process all over again. You do not understand it, though dimly you are aware that it is not for you to understand.

Nevertheless, you skulk behind her so that your reflection shows up bright and crisp in the mirror behind hers. She ignores you, resolute, perhaps does not even notice to begin with.

Gerson is already up and out. He rises earliest out of all of you despite his age, some balance of a cheerful disposition and the discipline of holding the same routine for centuries. Running the Waterfall general store takes a great deal of maintenance, and he does the lion’s share of that by himself, Innig being busy with her work and you with your studying. Even at his age, he will still surely outlive all of the underground, except perhaps Asriel, who is immortal (which is probably cheating in these circumstances).

Innig goes right on ignoring you, checking that she has not missed a single hair, so as with most mornings you give up and slouch to the kitchen instead.

You cannot match Astis by any means, but you are told that your breakfasts are passable—by your family and by Frisk, mostly, as Napstablook does not eat physical food and you tend to buy from Muffet’s bake sale when you are with her. Eggs, toast, (vegetarian) bacon and sausage, sliced tomatoes, corn still on the cob: You gather it all together in one skillet and fry it up in oil, loudly on purpose. If anything can pry Innig off of her own face it will be breakfast.

As it is you have the time to make pancakes as well—from a mix instead of from scratch, and seasoned like the free-for-all skillet’s contents with cinnamon sugar and salt and a few drops of syrup. The rest of breakfast you let almost burn, as you and your sister both share a taste for food browned to crispness, but the pancakes you fuss over, flipping them several times before you turn down the gas on the range and reach towards the refrigerator across the room, gesturing. If you just think _open_ at it irritably enough it will comply, and if you’re really concentrating you could work the door and get the whipped cream can without gesturing, but it is still early and you can’t be bothered to either leave the stove or treat the task like a meditation exercise.

You put plates and utensils on the table, get out iced tea for yourself. Innig arrives in the room just as you’re pulling your chair out to sit down. She sips at her glass and then frowns at you. “Liron, you could have put more sugar and lemon in this.”

“Do it yourself.” And she shakes her head at you elegantly but does, tapping one toe as she fusses at the fridge. You could be talking to yourself.

But when she sits back down, satisfied, she’s still staring at you. “Alphys is starting to move the equipment tonight,” she says. “You might get a call to come help depending on how much we want to take care of today.”

“Really.”

“Yes, she texted everyone this morning. If you would check your phone sometimes, maybe I wouldn’t have to play messenger absolutely every day,” Innig tells you pointedly. “At least take it with you today. And keep it on. Astis will be there and all.”

As if you’d require the incentive. “I will,” you say, which appears to mollify her.

“I’m going out to meet Undyne to get my shift,” she says with practicality, and stands up to wash her own dishes. Innig does not talk with her mouth full, and her table manners are impeccable—even now you sometimes catch her reaching for more forks than you would set out, like the way Chara still flinches even now if you were to raise your hand too quickly while standing near them. But she still eats very quickly; if you are not paying attention, the food simply seems to vanish, and she sits as if guileless, like someone else must have inhaled it while you blinked. She would not however deny it if you asked. Innig lies by omission only. “If you’re going to see Napstablook again, try not to drool on their floor when you fall asleep. And thank you for breakfast.”

She pats you once on the shoulder on her way out. You leave your dishes in the sink to soak; they will still be there to wash later, if someone else does not do it before you get back.

Finally, alone.

You take your time trimming your sideburns and goatee, staring at yourself in the frosted glass without really seeing your own face. Then there are chores to do: The little library alcove always needs dusting for the sake of the books, and you go over the room carefully a second time looking for insects. Spiders you let alone on principle—Muffet would personally feed you to her pet if you injured one of the intelligent ones by accident, escape plan be damned—and several small beetles and fireflies you take back into the caves, but silverfish you will murder on sight. (Today there are none.) And you clean your face and hands before changing into a fresh shirt at last; you had not cared enough to bring another outfit to Astis’ place last night.

Still alone in the house, you sit in your own room.

Prayer is not exactly the word for what you do. There are not specific deities that you worship, nor particular rituals you observe, altars to worship at or wishes you ask of the world. Books that you have read would call what you believe in “small gods”—the spirit or potential for spirit in everything. There is a will to the world, or a will to its construction, and whether the value of objects is innate or assigned by years of care by monster and human hands, there is nothing superfluous here. Even divorced from it all you still understand this. You could not claim yourself to be master of it all or aware of its web of connections if you did not know deep down that the world around you is alive. Gratitude—respect—acknowledgement is what it is your role to provide, as one who knows.

The next time you glance at the clock, it is nearly noon; time to go, then. You are almost to the door before you remember Innig’s nagging about keeping your phone on your person. Loath as you are to obey simply because it is your sister nagging, it is sensible: And so, for today, at least.

 

 

Napstablook’s house has that spartanness that is more especial to depression than it is to ghosts with little need for physical things: And anyways Mettaton’s next to theirs is bursting with clutter and twee pink ruffles that Innig helped him pick out. Your best friend among the monsters lives a simple life—the television, the computer, the stereos, the snail farm.

“Liron……” they say from across the room where you lie. “What else d’you think should go in this mix……”

You consider, absently, the track: Frog sounds, badly recorded Echo Flower whispers, something simple and tuneless with a triangle wave. You think you hear samples of yourself tuning your bass, long low bowed notes and then your body shifting while you adjust the fine tuners.

“More ambient samples,” you opine at length. Later Napstablook will mix and remix all the channels as dubstep, because these are the tracks that they do for fun. The music they produce for Mettaton’s shows is all jazz and showtunes and blaring chiptune disco; there isn’t much call for this sort of music in those programs. Innig, who prefers classical music and old alternative pop and hip-hop from the 2010s and 2020s, has muttered darkly about Napstablook’s taste being unlistenable, especially after they gifted Undyne with a mixtape of autotuned athlete screams (though she never complains when the ghost themself is in earshot).

You like its unrepentant oddity, the undercurrent of moodiness difficult to discern unless one knows the artist well. More like static or the half-remembered patterns of storm lightning than a heartbeat. Random pulses and flares, or a pattern so complex and unusual as to be taken for random. Close your eyes and you feel it in your ribs and the thin capillaries in your eyelids.

This has been a ritual since your childhood: Napstablook’s house was close and their floor was unoccupied. Their sound is like a universe and it provides a good backdrop for thinking—you do _not_ fall asleep here; it is meditation, which is different, but it is also a distinction that your sister and her more active friends do not always understand.

Alphys does, and Asriel, and Chara. That, now, is fine.

This particular backdrop of noise-in-progress feels like sinking into one of the old children’s search-and-find books they had in the orphanage, pages battered but still resplendent with the play of light between marbles, shadowy artistic photographs of outdated toys.

You find it odd and suspicious that every time you find the answers you have insufficient and long for more data, the world itself deigns to open up and give more to you. The mountain climb was not difficult, Ebott’s slopes and unkempt trails gentle even for a child. It was scarcely more than an overgrown hill, from the outside. And now Alphys’ research, flowering so suddenly over the past few years. You had hardly to do more than want.

When once you voiced an unformed half-remark on these thoughts in what you had thought was a casual tone, Innig quite shocked you by gripping your shoulders rather more forcefully than usual and telling you, low and kind, that the universe doesn’t revolve around anyone to such an extent. You are the hero of your own story and yours alone—the whole world’s story is not your personal stage. But how could one ever be _sure_ of that. This was the part that you did not say, because your sister’s wells of patience are deep but still finite, and you did not need her tattling to Gerson anyway.

It smacks of fate, smacks of storybook, hits you in the low vertebrae in the small of your back, a long chord of doubt. If the world is wrought of code and magic is rearranging and cheating that code to your purposes, determination and something a little fey and cruel behind it—if most of your magic is subconscious, is not something you fully understand, a black box of a power. If then: What proof is there that the selfsame power is not always at work, changing things to subtly suit your whims and wants; you the only person in all the cosmos. (But you are not the only real person, you remember in a flash of Astis’ hair under your hand, his mouth on your skin. You wonder how he deals with the constant questioning reality, how he has managed to not retreat into himself, human contact alien and unbearable. You doubt you will ever ask.)

But aside from the persistence of your misgivings, the meditative float through solar systems of marble in your memory and your imagination are pleasant. A thing is to be thoroughly enjoyed, and giving up is something you have always been terrible at, since you were very small. Lifting your eyelids, you are pleased to see that Napstablook at their desktop has been unaffected by your kaleidoscope daydreaming, that the poison of your imagination has not spilled out into their homely house. Everything is exactly as you left it, aside from the BGM, which is now tinny spookwave: Still Napstablook’s favorite after all these years.

You sit in the quiet and watch idly. You could approach them but it would only prod at their temper—and this the best-kept secret they have, even beyond their genius, most people seeing only a wallflower when they look upon Napstablook. It would embarrass them to the point of tears for it to be pointed out to them. But you like it about them, that they aren’t all give. It was comforting as a child to be confronted over and over again with more nuance to the people around you than you had been able to imagine on your own.

In the end it’s Gerson himself who arrives to fetch you, knocking loudly but without force on the side of the door with his cane, enough to rattle but not enough to leave a dent or a scuff mark. “Pardon, young’uns,” he says, cackling broadly, “but I need to borrow my child for a while.”

“See you… tomorrow then,” Napstablook says as you stand, and you offer them a small smile. For the next tomorrow, and a few tomorrows after, until the world splits open.

 

 

Most of your lessons take place in the storerooms for Gerson’s shop: Crystal-lit rough cave rooms with stone floors, ensorcelled to protect edibles from vermin, packed with neatly arranged wooden crates that make for decent chairs and benches if you wish.

You do wish: Gerson sits across from you, signs of stiffness in the legs. He has been an old man for as long as you have known him. Proud as Undyne is of your guardian’s glory days back in the war, you have never been able to imagine him hale, as if he has simply sprung into being wise and wizened.

You hold your hands out, across from him—the only real parental figure you’ve ever known, as harried orphanage workers never made much of a dent. Gerson holds them lightly, his skin cool and scaly and wrinkled under yours.

“Find your balance,” he tells you, like he always does. “Then we begin.”

So you do.

He does everything he can for you, but for all he is one of the few who still remembers human magic, it is still out of his jurisdiction. You cannot make bullets like a monster (from all accounts you would not be able to do so anyway); you can cast light, make a plant bloom or wither, move small objects or large ones over a distance. It is like having tides beneath your skin and only skimming the tops of seafoam, grasping for the glimmering lights upon wavelets, a dog in a fairy tale attempting to capture the moon. Your body burns with it; it seems as though violet sweat ought to pour out through your skin and drown you all.

“Breathe,” Gerson reminds you, steady with eons and with good sense besides. You obey.

The endless frustration is in so much of you still being unknown, even to you, even after living twenty-five years, fifteen of them in the presence of monsters. Like knowing only the earth out of all the stars and planets in space. The idea of never being able to find answers is clawing horror, but it is in your nature not to give up: It would kill you to be something you are not, as much as it would kill Innig to hide herself, or Asriel not to love and care for the denizens of his kingdom.

Gerson has you rearrange the boxes in the room one by one, like a childish slide puzzle, and without gesturing to the best of your ability. It is a pointless distraction and your arms and chest thrum with bright violet light that makes your head throb; Gerson produces a thermos of mild tea for you partway through, which you drain.

“I’ve said this before plenty of times,” Gerson tells you, staring very directly, “but your power’s a part of you. ‘S only going to bottle up and fester if you don’t use it. We really gotta get you a proper teacher once the king’s plans bear fruit—teach you something more useful and more interesting than these little exercises.”

He drops the genial old man act when he’s serious, which is not often. He said something to you once about how sometimes it’s better to be underestimated, thought of as silly; Innig, being herself, does not agree. But you do. People tend to be alarmed when you give them the unfiltered take on what’s going through your mind: And for another thing you want to know yourself; being known does not concern you one way or another.

“Try chargin’ up the light in the crystals,” he tells you now, which sends ripples of interest through you; years ago you discovered that you could not work the sorts of spells that monsters could to imbue things with light. “Less like putting spells on them, more like changin’ the batteries on the ones that are already there. Start with this ‘un—” he indicates broadly with a swipe of his cane— “then do as many as you can, hear?”

The workings of the extant spells are still a mystery to you, the guts of some alien machine, but there is power here brighter than lightbulbs and you funnel the burning in you towards it, glancing off, searching for the chink into which to siphon. (There.) Plinking sounds, as of glass, startle you into opening your eyes: The wall-jewel has exploded into fragments, still rolling in lopsided orbits on the uneven floor. Your gaze tracks to Gerson, uncertain, but he just regards this disarray and cackles.

“Good, good!” He slaps his knee, as if to a new favorite joke. “But try to dial it down a bit next time!”

You succeed in this in four more tries, if by success you were to define not destroying the crystal but merely infusing it with a light so bright as to be blinding. You’re blinking away neon afterimages for minutes even after Gerson flicks a hand at it to bring the light back down to normal levels.

“Keep tryin’,” he encourages.

Idly you think that you could probably induce the explosions purposely with enough practice, but you know better than to attempt that with anyone watching. You keep trying. You have the light down to a bearable level in five more tries, then in another ten there is no longer any visible difference. Gerson nods to you in approval and has you keep going for another several minutes, to make certain that you have the trick down.

“That’s good for today,” he says at last: The beady gaze steady, the beak of his mouth in a smile that someone who does not know him would mistake for his usual expression and not what it truly is (approval). “’D like to get you set up tryin’ to feed energy to other things, too, or pass it to people. But given what the Royal Scientist’s found out—I think we’d want Chara around when we try that.”

Your palms and fingers tingle dully—not the sharp complaint of blood supply restored but more a vague discomfort. All of existence is code like a Gogh painting, rough thick strokes that you could grab and shake out like a carpet if only you knew the trick to it, but purposely the most you can do is move objects and recharge lightbulbs. You will get to the bottom of this if it takes you a hundred years, or if it kills you.

“Maybe now would be a bad time with Chara,” you suggest nevertheless. “We’re already too busy.”

“True,” Gerson says, stroking his scraggle of beard. “I’ll see what I can wangle. You jus’ go on and rest for now, kiddo.”

You incline your head to him—father, teacher, grandfather, some combination—and smooth out the folds in your pants as you stand.

 

 

For the afternoon you take a platter of oranges and limes, greenhouse-grown, into the library with you while you study. Tart fruits fill the mouth with sensation and the shock of them grounds as adroitly as a slap, or Astis’ touch. The pith clings and coats your fingers, meaning you have to clean them every now and again to avoid damaging the pages of the oldest books, but you are used to this, running your fingers together, passing a damp cloth over them or scrubbing them on your pants.

Ability is nothing without understanding, is empty, is meaningless. Life does not have an answer key the way that a textbook does; you have to search more diligently and more carefully to make sense of it. Reading ancient histories, poring over accounts of the past, is rather like trying to make a grand tapestry from a patchwork quilt; nonetheless you have found clues this way. Found context. Reading and rereading. And you do it for amusement, too, not just obligation. It is the difference between empty obedience and fealty with love.

There is a rattling buzz from inside your pants pocket and you startle and nearly spill your tea: You had quite forgotten Innig’s behest to keep your phone on you. Half standing you extract it and unlock the screen, to find that your sister’s prophecy is fulfilled and Alphys is texting you.

_If youre not too busy would you mind coming down to hotland & helping us move the equipment??? Its not too big a deal if u cant but i was hoping wed get most of it done today since not as many ppl will be free tomorrow_

You pull up the keyboard. _It’s alright, I’ll go,_ you send back.

 _thx aaaagh,_ Alphys responds immediately, followed by a string of various emoji that your eyes slide over, mostly sparkles and drops of what you believe are meant to be sweat. _sorry to bother you about all of this anyway lol_

_Really, it’s fine. I have a wealth of favors to repay you for. The least I can do is help with the manual labor from time to time._

Alphys sends back several more emoji. You open the emoji picker on your own chat application, rest your weight back on the chair as you wait for them to load, and select the thumbs-up one, sending it and only it in response.

Back into your pocket goes the phone. You let your gaze drift back to the book you were reading, decide that it is not of sufficient consequence that you need your place marked, and shut it; but you allow it to remain on the table. The remaining uneaten fruit goes back in the kitchen: You cannot think of anything else you will need, and so you leave the library and head for the storefront.

“Heading out so soon?” Gerson asks, leaning against the counter.

“Alphys,” you reply simply. Better to keep it so, and avoid spreading information before it’s quite time to do so.

“Ahhh,” Gerson says, sage, and winks. “Carry on then.”

You carry on. Alphys made no mention of when exactly she wanted you to arrive, but the walk through Waterfall is not so long, and there is a lot of equipment that must be moved. Innig would likely tell you to warm up first before strenuous exercise, which is fine enough of an excuse for you to adopt if anyone asks questions. It is less stuffy here than in the library and the water, when you must wade through it, is a cool shock around your ankles, pulling you away from that second-nature sense that you are lucid dreaming: Which is to say your baseline. At any rate it keeps you from tripping over anything as you walk.

Step out of the shallows, tap your feet: As you pass beneath the great scrolling WELCOME TO HOTLAND sign, there is a familiar silhouette near the end of the cave. Muffet is using four of her hands to adjust signs around the folding table she always uses for the Spider Bake Sale, and you drift over to assist, at which she cackles and unloads the remaining signs into your arms.

She stands only as high as your shoulder now, but her gaze is shrewd as ever as she directs you from place to place. Muffet is not predictable to the sense that clockwork would be, but she is easily read and uncomplicated: She has a very strict hierarchy of priorities, first the spiders’ well-being, then securing finances for them, then everything else. She is not heartless or discourteous but is still capable of a deep ruthlessness that is very freeing to be around. She is the only monster in the underground who will not look at you crossways if you slip up and say something that does not fit their narrow clear-cut idea of morals, and that is why you have always been and will always be on good terms.

“Excellent, thank you deary,” she says gleefully, propping four fists on her hips and waist and clapping the other two. “I haven’t terrorized Waterfall _nearly_ enough lately and I simply _must_ remedy that. I’m sure that we’ll be needing a little extra cash before very long.”

You look at her and note, as from a distance, the utter confidence in her voice. Ever practical, Muffet is unloading bins of donuts from her inventory onto the table rather than paying attention to your suspicion. “What’s the occasion?”

She tilts her head to look at you and lifts one hand to cover her mouth as she giggles at you: No cruelty, but always a little maliciously. “Don’t be condescending, Liron, sweet; it’s not at all becoming on you. Only a fool would miss the change in atmosphere here over the past few days. Something _big_ is on its way, and everyone can feel it.”

“Can they.” This is distantly interesting to you: No one is stupid enough to have passed information around to people who couldn’t keep a secret, after all, so it’s a mystery how anyone suspects. The nature of monster souls, perhaps; they seem so much more receptive to, vulnerable to one another’s emotional states. Affective empathy in overdrive. You are glad not to suffer from that particular malady.

Muffet narrows all her eyes at you as her smile widens, long fangs poking out. “And _you,_ Mx Can’t-Be-Bothered, are _clearly_ involved with it up to your funny little human ears!”

You hold out a hand, which she sets one of hers in, the texture of her skin still strange against yours after all this time. You lift it and obligingly kiss the spindly fingers, playing along; there is no harm in the shows of affection, as it pleases her and does not bother Astis (whose only stipulation is that you discuss it with him beforehand if you want an open relationship so that he will know what’s happening). Muffet laughs.

“I’m afraid I can’t give you anything,” you say, a halfhearted effort at demure. “Non-disclosure agreement.”

She gives a theatrical little _humph,_ grin not faltering in the slightest. “Not that you would either way. And you are still terrible at pretending to be cute, deary!”

You give a limp-wristed and ironic little bow, appealing to the comic, which only makes her laugh at you more.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” you tell her. “Either because we’ll be able to talk about it or because you have eyes and ears in all places.”

Muffet puts on a smug expression. “I’ll keep it a secret even if I _do_ find out, just for you. And because I love to be in on a good surprise.”

“I don’t doubt it.” And there is no reason for you to, because you know all about her flights of mild but nonetheless whimsical sadism.

You linger, helping her set up the rest of the stand. Muffet is an old friend and a good one; you were never quite lovers, closer to what Astis calls friends with benefits, largely physical without much romantic affect, which in you if not in her is more like a rare and occasional disease that you have only truly caught because of Astis. Anyway your interests were compatible and it was pleasant, and it was not a hardship to stop fucking: She has her life’s work and you had tripped and fallen into romance. It hasn’t had to mean in any capacity that you should stop being friends, and you find that you are glad for this. Your fondness for Muffet is vague but persistent, rather like an infestation of lichens or some sort of mold.

Finished to her satisfaction, she opens one of the containers and holds out a Spider Donut to you, also rattling the donations tin. “Eat something before you fall over, deary, you probably haven’t had a decent meal since breakfast!”

You do not protest her demand for payment. Charity is a word that Muffet has quite purposely censored out of her personal dictionary. She will sulk and get poisonous for a while if you turn her down, and she is also correct, so you cough up and accept her peculiar brand of affection graciously.

 

 

When you arrive at the lab, to your mild misfortune, your sister is there with Undyne, both of them carrying large components of Alphys’ triple-S machines. Innig has her hair pinned back and out of her face, a black frizzy cloud at the nape of her neck; Undyne, who despises the heat, has stripped to the waist. As soon as they catch sight of you, Undyne grins and Innig frowns.

“You’re _late,”_ Innig informs you as you approach, as if you are somehow not aware. “We’ve already carried basically everything that needs to get carried today.”

“I was helping Muffet with her bake sale stand,” you inform her.

“Well, you can still help put things together,” she informs you. It appears that you are not to get out of this.

Resigned to your fate, you accept part of Undyne’s burden so that she can avoid drying out; the three of you pile into the elevators and head for the Core-to-castle main shaft. Undyne sighs with obvious relief when you emerge on the castle ramparts; from there it’s a short walk through the golden corridor and the overgrown throne room to the rough cave tunnels leading to the Barrier itself.

These tunnels are very crowded. Alphys is obviously present, directing the great assembly of mechanical parts—to her credit she only loses her train of thought and gawks at Undyne for roughly a minute—and so is the entirety of the Gaster family, though Sans does not seem to be participating overmuch (unsurprising). The other fallen humans are all here too: Innig goes to join Rufus in holding up a hull while Holly and one of Alphys’ assistants work to secure the delicate machinery underneath it. Astis is on the other side of the cavern, helping with another of the machines. Frisk is in a corner, hovering, watching the proceedings, probably forbidden by their parents from getting underfoot.

Said parents are in the thick of the action. Surface light from holes in the ceiling, the red-gold of dusk, speckles Asriel’s mountainous shoulders like leaves of gilt. (Mountain goat, mountain lion, _bergentrückung_ , in every respect a mountain of a man; this world is governed by numerical code and also by shitty puns, for reasons you will never be able to fathom.) He holds casing steady; Chara, the white streaks in their hair gleaming, works a screwdriver.

You come to realize that you understand what Muffet meant: There is a frenetic, almost feverish energy in this place. The light of the outside is very close, after all, and it is no longer unreachable.

Alphys directs you where to set down the parts that you brought, and then shoos you with flapping hands to take up a position to help someone else. Naturally you skirt two triple-S machines to find Astis, whose face turns towards yours for a brief smiling moment before he returns to his work. You take the place of one of Alphys’ assistants so that one more familiar with the machine may do the delicate work of reconstructing it.

Over Astis’ shoulder you see Chara reach up as if to support the same casing as Asriel and then halt, the motion swiftly aborted; their face goes bone white, defying even their rosacea, and they lower their right arm, gripping it just under the shoulder with the left fist.

Beside you Astis turns with a frown as if curious about what you’re looking at, even as Asriel stares down at his partner in concern. “I’m alright,” Chara says, with that unique tone of one pushing through great strain to speak clearly and normally as possible. “I’m fine. Don’t worry. I’m fine.”

This is of course the universal indication that a person is not at all fine, but Chara straightens and color is already returning to their face. They reach back up to steady the casing with their left hand after all, but the right arm remains hung limp at their side. Curious.

The blood batters light and rapid at the side of your throat, as if a cousin to morse code, a premonition you cannot rightly read. The universe will not crack open and reveal its secrets to you just yet, so: You put the feeling aside for further inspection at a later date.

 

 

Assembly takes another hour, or nearly, and then everyone is banished but for Alphys’ actual team, who apparently mean to linger to perform basic startup tests to make sure that everything still turns on.

You follow along with Astis, who meanders down the New Home castle ramparts instead of heading directly to the elevators. His steps are slow, his gaze distant; you watch him in profile and wait, secure in the expectation that he will tell you whatever is on his mind soon enough.

“Liron,” he says. “The ambassador job—I’m thinking about taking Asriel up on it.”

You nod to him; this is all he needs to unspool, you know.

“If you’ll come with me, I mean. You said that you’d be fine with it. And I do want to find my family, and you do deserve the chance to find a decent teacher. I don’t know how good I’d be at it without the training really, but I do want to help. The monsters are good people and I want to help them, and—I think your advice yesterday was good. That there are some things that’ll wait, if I still want them then.”

His steps grow more and more ponderous, uncertain, as his voice strengthens. At this last he turns, stopping completely, the dark eyes sweeping from the carved gray city and the distant cave walls to look you full in the face. Your pulse jumps again, strange and unbidden; you are very aware of yourself, unusually so, details so sharp it’s very nearly uncomfortable. As though you could pick out every stray hair of Astis’ stubble. The mole beside his eye could be a period or a comma.

“Would you come with me?”

You nod.

“Traveling is another form of study,” you say, honest, “and one I would be able to do with you. Whatever you choose—I’ll give it a try.” There is hope in the face across from yours; you reach out with your narrow hands and take his soft ones into them, fingers knitted through fingers. Contact, and heat. “We can make it work.”

Astis lowers his eyes for just a moment, the slow smile starting at his mouth drawing all your attention. “We can make it work,” he repeats, and the smile widens.

He leans in, or you do, your eyes falling half closed, and your foreheads press together; his hands tighten on yours. Change is coming, slow but building up steam against inertia like an engine on a track, inexorable; you neither wish it nor reject it fully, but hold it at arm’s length quietly as your course and its are set.


	5. we make ourselves into constellations, cobble together all of our bits, chase back the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bonus warnings for this chapter include: characters being Bitter About Antiblackness (and racism in general, but particularly antiblackness) and very brief mention of police brutality.

Outside it is drizzling.

What this means for you here in the garden throne room during morning exercise is that there’s a stubborn pattering from over the cave ceiling, and through the holes in the ceiling thin little raindrops slant down, chilled, to spatter leaves and petals and the earth, and also the heads and shoulders of everyone who’s standing underneath. It’s cold, so Undyne stands out of the way, her eye flicking balefully up towards the ceiling every few minutes as if to ascertain her position. Rufus, immune to the cold by virtue of persistent hypomanic episodes and an inability to hold still, lets the rain leave little crowns of water droplets in his dark red hair without seeming to notice or care.

Chara gently herds Frisk over to the side of the room where they’ll be safe, telling them to be careful not to get too wet and catch cold. Frisk nods peaceably in response to this.

The Hotland guards have a gym in New Home, and the guard dogs of Snowdin keep in shape by running in the forest. You and Undyne have always kept up with the training sessions you started here with Chara nearly two decades ago, and here is still where you practice, even now that Asgore has stepped down to rest his old bones. Sometimes Rufus joins in, sometimes Asriel; lately Frisk has been bringing a long thin stick along to mimic Chara’s trident forms. Not because they want to fight anyone, they explained when Undyne raised her eyebrows at them the one time, but because they like the exercise and wanted to be a part of it.

Chara had wrapped an arm loosely around their shoulders and looked at the rest of you with this _incredibly_ proud and smug expression, like _look at how adorable my child is, aren’t you jealous? You’re jealous, right? I’m not sharing._ This relatively new side of them, something you still can’t help but think of as a maternal streak even if you know better than to ever say so out loud, is so funny as to be alarming.

You brush fresh rain from your shoulders, ignore the drops collected in your hair, and resume your stance.

It is not particularly ladylike to enjoy these morning sessions quite so much, but enjoy them you do. Being amongst monsters for so much of your life, and monsters being much longer-lived than humans, it is easy to forget the rates at which aging usually affects humans—but even being within a stone’s throw of thirty, you and Rufus (who is thirty-two) are still as limber and agile as you were when you were teenagers; Chara was already disabled and therefore should probably not be counted because they’re doing their best, but Prase, who is not, cannot say the same.

Besides all of that, though, you like to move your body, to spar with your compatriots, to keep in practice and polish your strength. Undyne, Rufus, and Chara are the only people in the world who are anywhere near your level at fighting, and so you can challenge each other to grow and use as close to your full strength as you dare in a situation that is not lethal, and it still has all the relaxed feeling of a roughhousing match. This is good exercise, good bonding, and it is also _goofing off._ It’s one of your favorite parts of the day.

Today you send Rufus gently rolling literally head over heels through a thick patch of large and healthy clover, and then both of you dodge Undyne’s spear barrage for about five minutes straight before you trip over your partner’s foot and she gets both of you, laughing uproariously. Rufus’ knees are grass-stained and you have leaves in your hair and Asriel is probably going to give you both reproachful basset-hound eyes while he heals up any plants you’ve trodden on too hard, but it’s very worth it.

On the other side of the throne room Chara and Frisk are still doing forms together, slow like calisthenics so that Frisk will be able to keep up. Chara has their hair dragged back into a ponytail and pinned up out of their face, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt; Frisk is wearing gym shorts and a sweatshirt, their hair loose.

You look over at them idly while Undyne is still laughing and Rufus is brushing himself off from his tumble, and you’re about to look away when Chara makes a noise like a tire puncturing and drops the low end of their trident abruptly. Frisk jumps—Undyne and Rufus both join you in watching—and Chara lets go of their weapon to knead their upper arm, face creased with pain.

Because you’re closest, you start off towards the two of them, Chara with their trident at their feet and Frisk hovering, still clutching their stick, seeming not to know what to do with their hands. “Are you all right? What happened?”

“Same as yesterday,” Chara grunts. “This _fucking_ bicep. Must just be the humidity. Or the rain. _Hope_ it’s the weather, anyway.”

They’ve gotten the sleeve of their t-shirt up and are rubbing the thick brown scar like they have a compulsion, and you stand around rather uselessly, because even as long as you’ve known each other sometimes it’s just not a good idea to touch Chara when they’re particularly wound up. Their fingers don’t move to a measured rhythm like stimming; it’s a horrible jerky uneven squeeze-squeeze-release-squeeze-release with no rhyme or reason to it that you can see.

Six years ago, Chara brought a knife to a gun fight with an eleven-year-old, who summarily shot them in the arm and cleanly severed most of their bicep. You cannot even mock them for this because it would be hypocritical, you having taken a bullet for Undyne in the same fiasco. But whereas you got off more or less easily after you got a lump of lead picked out of your shoulder where it had lodged in your bone, Chara has been experiencing stiffness and pain with increasing frequency as the years go by.

You’re not sure why they’re so affected when you bounced back just fine. Differences between the types of the wounds, or that Chara was older, or that then and now they are less able-bodied. But—lately, it seems to be getting worse. It is _definitely_ getting worse.

“Lemme help you with that,” Undyne says gruffly, edging you out of the way in the best approximation of gentleness she’ll show anybody who isn’t a) a kid or b) Alphys. “You’re just kneading it like your dork husband making bread, that’s not gonna help.”

“Okay, _Mom,”_ Chara retorts, rolling their eyes. They still submit when your best friend has them sit in the dirt and stretch, face strained when she pushes their back to get them to lean down that extra inch. It’s still better than seeing that expression like a wet ball of paper on them.

Rufus crunches past you too, patting at Frisk’s shoulder amiably. They’re almost the same height, you realize with a sudden pang, and have to fight against the urge to grin. Rufus would probably sell all his toes for the ability to grow a handful more inches. You will never deny that you find both his height and his complexes over it endearing, but you will also do your damnedest to avoid admitting it within his earshot, because he would hate that. “C’mon, Frisk, let’s go see if you can beat your sit-up record.”

Frisk shakes their head and signs _no thank you,_ not even looking at him.

Chara, who has probably been keeping an eye on all this, grunts and says “Go ahead, I’ll be fine—I’m just getting old.”

Frisk is not having this. They sit down next to their parent and hug their knees, hooded eyes never leaving Chara.

“It appears that we’re going to have to leave them to it,” you tell Rufus, who turns to you and shrugs like _now what._ “If you’d rather we wait for them to get done, I could always bench press you.”

His whole _face_ goes dark red, and he just sucks his breath in and grins at you. “I dare you to see if you can make it past 50 reps today,” is all he says, and you grin back.

You can’t really bench press a person with your mind on something else—even if it weren’t a safety hazard, Rufus is warm in your hands and depending on where you’re holding him up you can feel his quick little hummingbird pulse through your palms, it’s almost humbling.

So you only spare Chara one more look before you consciously shut your worries out. Even so, it still occurs to you almost uncomfortably that the amount of white in their hair has to have quintupled since you first met them.

 

 

You only stop off at home for long enough to change out of your exercise clothes and into your armor. It’s still early, but Gerson is already at the storefront; Liron is also out, which is fairly unusual. Ze’s probably at Napstablook’s or off somewhere with Astis.

Rufus once described your job as Royal Guards as being like the human police, if the human police actually did their job properly instead of harassing the selfsame vulnerable people they ought to be protecting. That’s a pretty accurate statement—except that there’s a great deal less crime here in the underground than there is on the surface. Was. It’s hard to be sure of the crime rates back up there when you’ve been down here for nearly two decades. So a lot of your job is to just patrol around looking impressive and helpful in case anyone’s having any problems.

Today you’re on shift in Waterfall in the morning and Hotland in the afternoon. Only you and Undyne ever patrol here, mostly because with Undyne around everyone feels safe enough to not need or want more guards. Those who were around before Asgore appointed her to her position still remember when she was a kid who used to go pick fights with anything that moved to prove a point to her overprotective parents, and those who grew up with her as Captain all seem a little starstruck by her. You’re pretty sure that the only reason she shares her shifts with you at all is because of best friend privileges and the fact that you live here.

That’s fine with you, though; it’s a lot easier being just a Royal Guard and treated warmly than it is to have most of the people around you scrutinizing you coldly for any possible flaw.

…You are fairly certain that you are going to have to find a polite way to turn Chara and Asriel’s job offer down flat sometime in the very near future.

Your first sweep through the area is uneventful: You pass by Shyren and Lemon Bread in the corner, but you only wave, as Lemon Bread tolerates non-Shyrens in her personal space only on sufferance. (She chitters her teeth at you as you pass anyway.)

On your way back from the Snowdin side of Waterfall, you find Bob the Temmie loitering around the bigger of the two bridge seed puzzles.

“It’s pretty unusual to find one of you outside the village,” you remark, kneeling down so that you won’t be towering over the tiny monster. “Is something wrong?”

“Perhaps not ‘wrong’ per se, but still rather bothersome,” says Bob. “I was taking a walk with my friend Temmie and she went ahead of me to the bench; in an unfortunate turn of events, a Woshua who was also passing through at the time decided to, er, wosh the Bell Blossom and took away the bridge seeds.”

“HALP P!!!!!” squeaks a tiny voice from down the waterlogged corridor, as if to corroborate Bob’s story.

“That is quite the pickle,” you say, smiling a little. “Tell you what, why don’t I go put the bridge back for you.”

“That would be exceedingly helpful indeed,” Bob replies. Like most Temmies, they’re much too small to carry bridge seeds around.

It’s lucky for the two of them that it’s you who passed through here and not Undyne, you muse as you stand on the bridge at the far end of the room and aim seeds to send floating down the river. She doesn’t have much patience for what Chara calls the “mid-aughts lolrandom netspeak” way that the majority of Temmies talk, and might not have stopped to check whether the one who needed helping was Bob or not.

Once the last bridge seed is in place, you cross the room again and wait for them to sprout. Bob stays on this bank, maybe worried about someone else coming and resetting the puzzle yet again; you cross the tough leaves to find the stray Temmie hiding beneath the bench. She wiggles her way out when you stoop down.

“hOI!!!” she says. “Thanks asistence!”

“You’re welcome,” you tell her, and scoop her up under one arm to carry her safely back across the water. She and Bob scurry off down to the pathway deeper into Waterfall… and then turn back to look at you pleadingly; the Bell Blossom removed that bridge too.

This is the last trouble you see for another hour: You meet up with Undyne mid-shift outside her house, where she complains a little about how boring this particular morning has been. It’s not the kind of thing that she usually says to people she’s not friendly with, since she thinks it’s not very Royal Knight-ish to openly hope for some sort of incident. You part ways after a little more commiseration.

You pop into Hotland for just long enough to visit the water cooler, then turn back and begin making your way through the blue stone caves once more. You haven’t gone far at all before you find Aaron of all monsters cowering in a clump of sea grass.

“What’s the matter?” you ask him, and he yelps and jumps about a foot.

“Oh, it’s just you,” he says, and—okay, Aaron stopped hitting on you definitively when you and Rufus became Officially A Thing, but he’s usually got winks to append to any greeting he’s giving you. Or anyone else, for that matter. He’s still sweating profusely and his eyes are round as dinner plates.

“All right, what happened?”

“Well,” Aaron blusters, “I was headed through the quiet room minding my own business when a-all of a sudden…” He shivers. _“Spooky music_ started playing from nowhere!”

“Spooky music,” you repeat.

Aaron squeezes his eyes shut and tugs on his ears anxiously. “This is my punishment for creeping, isn’t it! I just know it!! I’ll never creep ever again…!”

“That’s probably a good goal,” you tell him. “But I’ll see what I can do about the spooky music, so don’t worry.”

“I would be in your debt _forever,”_ Aaron says emphatically. He makes as if he’s going to wink at you out of reflex, but then appears to decide better of it.

There’s really only one possible source of spooky music here in Waterfall, so you tramp down the path to the Blook snail farm. There are indeed spooktunes blaring; taking a look around the corner, you find that Napstablook’s door is ajar. A cursory peek into their house shows you that they’re alone, sitting at their computer and apparently browsing the undernet. You gently pull their door closed. There: Their work BGM is no longer blasting throughout the quiet spot.

With the immediate problem solved, you turn on your heel and head right back home, first sticking your head into Liron’s bedroom and then looking around the library. None of the doors are closed, so ze’s out again who-knows-where. Hir phone—typically—is sitting on hir bedside table, as if you didn’t just remind hir to bring it with hir _yesterday._

So, sighing all the way, you stop by the storefront, where Gerson is in the middle of selling crab apples to Loren. You wait until their transaction is finished and they’ve vanished around the bend before letting your scowl rise to your face.

“Now, what’s the matter here?” Gerson asks you, grinning.

“If you see Liron today,” you tell him, _“please_ inform hir from me that ze needs to close Napstablook’s door when ze leaves. Anyone could get in, and when Napstablook’s got their music on it scares Aaron.”

Gerson cackles. You want to sigh again, but you guess it’s easier to take the little things in stride when you’re as old as your guardian is. “Will do, will do.”

 

 

After the morning’s shift has ended, you return home only long enough to change out of your armor and into your red dress. You’ll have to come back to return to uniform for the afternoon shift, but you’d have to change the clothes beneath it anyway because of the shift in temperature in Hotland. And you have a lunch appointment.

Wanting to make it as quickly as you can, you ride the Riverperson’s ferry to Snowdin Town; you could look for Rufus while you’re here, but he’s probably either still working or is on his own lunch break. You’ll see him later—it’s fine to let him be for now.

The walk through the forest to Home is brisk, as usual. It’s never worth wearing a coat because moving around warms you up and anyway it’s always warm at Asgore and Toriel’s, but you do always wish briefly for one for the first few minutes. Trust humans to seal monsters away in the mountain with so many disparate mini biomes in it.

No one’s waiting for you when you get through the heavy doors and then up the stairs, but then that’s normal, unless it’s a particularly formal appointment. You just wipe your shoes on the mat and rap your knuckles against the wall to announce your presence.

Toriel’s head peeks out from around the right-hand corner. “Come right in, dear,” she calls, “we’re just about ready getting the food set out.”

“Thank you,” you call back, and as she disappears back into the living room, you cross the foyer to follow her.

Rufus calls the Dreemurr household in Home a perfect palette swap of the royal living quarters in New Home. He had to explain what that meant to you the first time he said it, but now that you understand, you agree. Almost everything is the same, down to the furnishings: It’s only the small things that are different. Chara and Asriel have a lot of photos up in their foyer, and the bookshelf in their living room is mostly filled with fiction, whereas here it’s where Toriel keeps her nonfiction and textbooks, and where Asgore leaves his cookbooks and scrapbooks.

Toriel is setting out laden plates and Asgore is taking his seat, the tea platter already in the center of the table, as you approach. They’ve already gotten an adult human-sized chair out of storage for you, so you take your seat and smile at them.

“Thank you for inviting me over,” you tell them.

“Oh, no,” Asgore says, beaming across the table at you. He’s got a lot of gray in his beard and hair these days—almost as much as Chara does. “Thank _you_ for coming to us, Innig dear.”

“Yes, indeed,” Toriel adds. She sets your teacup and saucer down on the corner of your placemat. “It is good to have our own space again, but one does get to miss having young people around.”

You pick up the cup and look idly at your own reflection in the tea’s surface. “I’m glad to tide you over until Frisk and their friend come over for tutoring, then. How have things been?” And, looking up at Asgore specifically, you add, “We do miss you at practice a lot, too.”

He beams at you. “Well, goodness, I will have to try to get down to observe sometime soon, then.”

“As long as you don’t try to join in, Gorey dear,” Toriel says shrewdly, making her husband laugh.

“Oh, no. I am well aware that I cannot keep up with Undyne, Innig, and Rufus anymore.” The smile on his face is gentle without an ounce of regret, and you wonder just how it must feel to be old all of a sudden after centuries of eternal youth. You note also that he didn’t mention Chara as someone he could no longer keep up with, which is interesting—an oversight, or deliberate? If you were a betting sort of woman you might put money on the latter. “It’s not such a hardship, though. I never did like to fight, and after the war it is difficult to think of it as just exercise.”

“Even after all this time,” you muse.

“Some things never quite leave you,” Toriel says. She isn’t looking at either you or Asgore; her gaze is leveled on the opposite wall, and her dark eyes seem to reach even farther away.

You nod. She isn’t wrong.

“It is always a joy to look at the seeds one has sown and see how they have bloomed, however,” Asgore says, and just like that everyone is back to earth. You knew him first as _king_ and _teacher_ but he’s undeniably happier like this, as an aging man puttering around in the garden and tending to his hobbies, as somebody’s grandpa.

You make a soft sound of agreement and take a drink of tea. It’s jasmine; since his retirement Asgore has taken to cultivating tea plants and flowers himself, first following recipes and guides and then starting to experiment. This particular batch has unfamiliar notes to its flavor—probably he’s been adding spices or other flowers again. If you weren’t here for a reason you’d badger him for what he’s been adding, and get him to let you guess at the ingredients and amounts. He’s the one who made the entire concept of tea fun for you again, after it being a status symbol for most of your childhood.

“Speaking of seeds and blooming,” Toriel says very casually as you set the cup down, “have you made any decision yet about that offer of an ambassadorial position?”

Left to your own devices, you and Asgore would probably trade small talk up until it was time for you to go, and Toriel absolutely knows this, so here she has delivered unto your procrastination a swift and merciful death. You’d been expecting her to make you talk about it at some point—that is, more or less, why you came—but Christ, no one plays hardball like Toriel Dreemurr. She has been its undisputed champion for centuries, you bet.

“I have not.” You help yourself to crackers slathered in apple butter and wash them down with another long draft of tea. “Astis and Papyrus both said yes—you would have heard that from Asriel or Chara.” Both Boss Monsters nod in unison, their long muzzles bobbing at exactly the same angle, the same speed. It must be a gesture one of them picked up from the other, a long time ago. “That’s friendliness and natural problem-solving skills from both humans and monsters. But we have—three or four days left before we break the Barrier, and that’s not long enough for them to really study politics. Astis is my sibling’s partner, so I’ve gotten to know him well enough that I’m well aware he’ll have trouble not wearing his heart on his sleeve. Papyrus stumbles sometimes even with monster social expectations, and he’s going to get thrown into dealing with human ones now too.

“Asriel and Chara will be handling things politically, and I know that they’ll have help from the two of you. But there’s a fair chance that throwing Astis and Papyrus into that world will be like tossing them into a piranha tank. If I take the job too, even on a temporary basis, I could cover for a lot while they’re learning.” You take another sip of tea. “I know this, but I’m still hesitating. I was happy to leave the business royalty life behind when I came here.”

Asgore rests his big elbows on the table and weaves his fingers together, resting his chin on them and looking at you steadily. His eyes are sunflower yellow and the kindness in them is worse than any sort of admonishment.

“Innig,” he says, “do you want us to encourage you to take the job, or not to?”

Your mouth twists up into some sort of bitter smile all on its own. “Either. Both. I’m not entirely sure myself.”

He just shifts and reaches across the table to pat your shoulder then.

 

 

Immediately after lunch with the Dreemurrs you have to hurry home and change back into your patrol things—this time leaving skin bare where metal won’t be touching it directly to protect you from the sheer heat of Hotland—and off you go to the Riverperson so that they can ferry you off to check-in.

Hotland is significantly more populated and busy than Waterfall, and has a lot of precarious jump puzzles with mesh magic nets underneath that are difficult to get out of for some, so there are many more guards on duty here at any given time. The others couple up and do their shifts in twos; you patrol alone, except for the rare circumstances when Rufus gets assigned here with you.

You pass by working monsters on their breaks, loitering at the shooting puzzles to kill time before they’re back on shifts in New Home or the Core. You pass by Mettaton’s crew members setting up for his variety show later, stocking the kitchen set with model food; you have to weave through them on the squeaky-clean tile floor, and you spare a glance for the painted blue sky behind the model window. It’s been a long time since you’ve had a clear view of the real one.

You shoo a gaggle of Pyropes away from where they’re transparently planning some sort of prank on the conveyor belts. You gently tell a group of diamond-faced boys in stripy shirts brazen as sunrise to go to school or you are going to call their parents on them, and they shriek and laugh and flee, and you head back to the Waterfall entrance to get water from the cooler: Two cups into your face, one more over your head. The heat is brutal.

Out of the second-floor elevator, you catch Holly and her friends Fi and Ska eating hot dogs from the Toasty Buns stand, all three of them still in their school uniforms, legs dangling off the edge of the platform like none of them have a care in the world.

You place your hands on your hips and look down your nose at them sternly. “I don’t have to call _your_ guardians, now, do I?”

“Nah,” Ska tells you, slightly garbled through chewed-up hot dog; thankfully she swallows it before you have to reprimand her on not talking with her mouth full. “Kid blew up half the science classroom and school got let out early while them and the teachers clean it up. Wicked awesome if you ask me.”

“No one was hurt,” Fi adds, waving one hand. “It just made a really big mess.”

“I wouldn’t let these two play hooky anyway, and you know it,” Holly says. She is right, and that’s why you approached them for an explanation instead of just getting your phone out to contact Grillby. She knows this, too.

“Well, don’t loiter for too long before you go home,” you tell them. “And at least sit more safely. Heaven forbid you actually fall off; who knows how long it’s going to take before one of the guards will be back around to fish you out of the safety nets.”

“What _ever,”_ Ska says, rolling her eyes, but she scoots back away from the drop anyway and gets to her feet, patting at her skateboard. “Let’s go find someplace _safer_ to hang so Aunt Mall Cop here doesn’t write us up or whatever it is human police do.”

You raise your eyebrows at her, but Fi is giggling into her hands, and Holly is grinning with her eyes lowered. “Ska, you’re playing _way_ too many old video games these days.”

“Eff the police!” is all Ska says, saluting no one in particular with both middle fingers. Apparently this is some kind of reference that you don’t and wouldn’t get. She hops up onto her skateboard and rolls away; Fi pulls herself up and jogs after.

Holly gets up too, but she lingers, chin tilted up, brown eyes studying your face. She looks less rigid with her new haircut—less stodgy, more relaxed, but also as if she’s finding it easier to breathe.

“I have a bit of a nosy question,” she says, and you blink at her, nonplussed.

“Well,” you say, “I’ll answer it if I can.”

Holly nods, as though this is fair. “Are the Dreemurrs—is Chara’s family doing all right?”

This is not what you were expecting, and you stand clotheslined for a few moments. Your first instinct is to reply that yes, of course they are, but you don’t know if that would be a true answer, so you think about it. About Frisk’s clinginess, and Chara having muscular issues this morning and last night.

“I’m not sure,” you tell Holly in the end.

She appears to consider this for a moment, and then she nods. “All right,” she says, and “thank you” and then she’s walking briskly off after her friends.

You frown after the dark back of her gakuran and her bright blond hair until she’s a little smudge over by the elevator, and then you shrug and face forward. You can leave that question to percolate on the back burner while you patrol; you have a job right now that still needs doing.

This job includes, once you’ve nearly reached the MTT resort, breaking up a small crowd that has gathered around a Tsunderplane shrilly berating a Vulkin to the point where the latter is on the verge of tears, and then sorting things out between the two monsters. Vulkins are notoriously bad at green magic, but to a one they all want more than anything to be helpful; the combination is often an awkward one. Eventually you get the Tsunderplane to apologize for going overboard, and extract a pledge from the Vulkin to ask first before launching in to provide assistance.

All this means that you’re absolutely beat by the time you get to the hotel steps. Very luckily for you, it appears that Burgerpants’ boyfriend has decided to sell ice cream here in Hotland today.

“Good afternoon, Guardswoman!” he trills cheerily, his silly blue ears standing straight up in excitement, and you decide what the hell and mosey over and buy yourself two ice cream sandwiches instead of one. He beams at you as he hands them over. The only time you think you ever saw him worried for more than a few minutes was when you had to take him aside and talk about whether or not he had a permit to sell here. (He did not; you helped set him up towards getting one.)

You leave him a tip and sit on the stairs and spend the scant remainder of your shift eating ice cream in full plate armor.

 

 

Mettaton’s studio is utterly jam packed with floors dedicated to one aspect of his career or another. The gym is on one of the lower floors—thankfully. There aren’t many elevators, which means they’re always very crowded, and you’re probably plenty capable of climbing multiple flights of stairs to make the trip, but that is frankly punishing after an afternoon’s work running around in Hotland.

The gym is what Mettaton calls it, but because the only part of gyms he really cares about are the parts for dancing and gymnastics, that is what it is: Half dance studio, half mats and foam pits. Long before you arrived in the underground, Mettaton was already watching old scavenged human movies, his ghostly eyes fixed on the glitz and glamour, and he decided that all of it was all he ever wanted in life. Everything he’s interested in, he wants to do exactly like humans do but sparklier; everything he’s not interested in, he ignores. Mettaton is the most self-absorbed monster you’ve ever borne witness to except maybe Burgerpants, and he is completely open and unashamed in his narcissism. You adore him.

Once you’ve changed into a leotard and opened the dance studio door, you find your best friend aside from Undyne lounging seductively on the floor, one leg popped up so that his heel is hooked over the rail that runs around the mirrored walls. He is wearing hot pink booty shorts and a tank top with a loud leopard print, his eyes are half lidded, and his tongue is dangling out. You wonder a little exactly how long he’s been holding this pose waiting for you to arrive.

“Hello, you ridiculous robot stud,” you say, already grinning, pulling the door shut behind you.

“Why Innig, _darling,”_ Mettaton coos, “fancy meeting you here!”

He levers himself up and comes sailing across the floor to hug you. You kiss his robotic cheeks because he is a silly man and will absolutely eat up the formal gesture, and he plants a robotic smooch on either side of your face too.

You do not reply to his greeting with a sarcastic reminder that of course you’re here, this has been your weekly thing for almost as long as you’ve known each other, and meeting here specifically has been a thing for as long as Alphys has been building him bodies with legs.

You sit down on the floor and stretch to warm up. Mettaton does too; he doesn’t specifically need to because he’s a robot, but this is like playtime for him and to be honest with yourself it’s fun to have the company.

Then you get up and together you practice your leg lifts. Mettaton again doesn’t really need to do this, he’s a robot and if he’s losing flexibility all he has to do is get Alphys to fix up his joints, but it’s nice to do this with someone else. It reminds you of being a kid in the nicest and newest community center in Ebott Town with other human children, all in their own frilly tutus and sparkly leotards.

The only reason you got away with it for so long is because all the teachers there were friends. It was frankly stupid of you to just stop showing up to fencing class and watch the ballet one from the hallway, stupid and desperate, and it was stupider and more desperate still to go in with them and say you wanted to learn. But they were good people and they covered for you, let you practice in sweatpants and barefoot alongside your prim and beautiful classmates. When your teacher noticed the way you looked at the other girls’ tutus and toe shoes and asked, you told her the truth, and it wasn’t long before she got you your own tutu and toe shoes to match.

She’s also the one who got you started working to adapt the classical poses and positions to your higher center of gravity, classical women’s ballet having been developed with cis women in mind. The rest of that you figured out here with Mettaton, and a little with Asgore’s lessons in combat footwork.

Dancing with Mettaton is ridiculous because he is ridiculous, and it’s also ridiculously fun. As soon as you’re done with your basic exercises, he starts playing crackly discopop out of his own chest speakers and wagging his eyebrows at you, teeth sunk into his lower lip, hips already shimmying to the beat. You laugh and let him drag you out into the middle of the room.

Stylistically you are both all over the place—Mettaton learned from Broadway and various forms of latin dance, and those are the defaults he improvises from; as a kid you learned classical and contemporary ballet and that was basically it. But he’s got the technique to keep up with you as long as your human endurance will go.

He dances you from one corner of the room to the other, and you dance him right back, and after a good while his low-fi playlist loops back around to the start, and your toes ache too fiercely for you to stand on pointe, so you both just sit down in the middle of the room and laugh.

“Dearest darling,” Mettaton half-sings, sprawling sloppily onto his back, “I will have you dancing on stage with me one day, sooner or later. You mark my words. You’re _wasted_ in law enforcement. Come run away and be a star with me.”

“I would get bored playing underground’s top idol with you,” you inform him. “I like my job now a lot better. And also Rufus would probably self-immolate with jealous rage. Please stop antagonizing my boyfriend.”

Mettaton pouts beautifully. “Oh, if you do _insist._ It needn’t be a permanent career choice, anyway; I just want the wide world out there to get a gander at how truly magnificent you are. Same as with Blooky and Shyren.”

“Maybe someday.” You stretch and lie back on the floor with him. “Don’t forget about the rest of us when you’re a world-famous star on the surface, Mettaton.”

“I would never,” he replies, mock-offended. “Maybe only a little. But I am in a very unique position to appeal to all of humanity and get popular opinion on our side in the political fracas that will surely ensue from the Barrier breaking and monsterkind emerging.”

“That sounds canned,” you tell him. “I bet Chara fed that to you word for word.”

“It is rather lacking in pizazz, isn’t it,” Mettaton says fondly. “But no matter how busy I must _tragically_ make myself for the good of my fellow monster, I will still make time for weekly dance hour. Even if it has to be more like monthly dance hour instead.”

“I am touched,” you tell him, and he blushes like one of Alphys’ anime bishies because he knows you mean it.

 

 

You’re nearly late to Grillby’s.

You’re nearly late to Grillby’s because it takes you that long to get ready— _why, why, why_ does facial hair have to grow this fast, you _just_ shaved not twelve hours ago, it is the bane of your entire existence and you cannot _wait_ to get electrolysis and make it fucking _stop,_ Jesus _fucking_ Christ—and you are very glad that you’re still wearing toe shoes, which you can run in even through slush, instead of cute strappy impractical heels that would kill your knees and ankles anyway.

Rufus is at the bar waiting for you when you arrive, sneakered feet dangling several inches above the floor from where he sits on one of the bar stools, slouched with one arm over the countertop. He looks perfectly casual but for the fact that his eyes, shockingly green against his warm brown skin and red hair, are already fixed on the door when you walk in. The effect is somewhere between adorably hopeful and laughably douchey. He grins when you arrive, and the grin widens when you cross the restaurant to sit next to him. Typical of Rufus he’s wearing a t-shirt even in this climate, but he’s got long pants on as if in concession to your delicate sensibilities.

“Hey,” he says, not making any mention of your tardiness.

“Hello,” you reply, smiling back at him. Rufus reaches out and picks your hand up in his, just lifts it up and kisses your palm completely casually, staring into your eyes the whole while to watch you suck in your breath.

You grab his face in the same hand as gently as you can while still being firm and push, threatening to unseat him. “Let’s leave the sloppy makeouts for later,” you say very evenly with no mention of the fact that you are blushing. “This is Grillby’s and your parents could walk in any minute.”

Rufus is laughing at you. “They won’t,” he says, muffled into your hand, “on account of they don’t come in here when I’m on dates, but sure.”

Grillby stops polishing plates for long enough to raise his fiery eyebrows at the two of you, and you summarily and silently decide to stop flirting and order something already.

Whenever you’re at any sort of restaurant, Rufus always orders what feels like triple the amount of food you do: He has a bowl of chili, another of cole slaw, a veritable boat of fries, and two separate sandwiches. You ordered the fake chicken with the apple and cucumber garnish, which is bigger than Rufus’ plate but still only one dish; you don’t doubt that he’ll be finished with his food before you are and will also be begging to try bites of your dinner with his best puppy eyes too. You have given up wondering where he puts it all; monster food just sort of vanishes somewhere between the small and large intestine anyway, so it’s a moot point.

In between demolishing a fairly ridiculous amount of food, Rufus turns to you grinning, red-cheeked. He’s not drinking—he hardly ever does, he’s a lightweight—but you’d forgive a stranger for jumping to conclusions just now because of the general atmosphere. “How was your shift, hon?”

“Broke up a fight in Hotland, rescued some Temmies in Waterfall. Did you know that Aaron turns into a plateful of jello in an earthquake at the sound of spooktunes?”

Rufus lists into the bar, snickering. He is adorable and you are _extremely charmed._ “Poor Aaron.”

“Mmm. Liron was out, but I’m going to have to have a word with hir about unintentionally terrorizing our neighbors.”

“Good luck,” Rufus says, and he’s not even jokey about it. You sigh a little. You love Liron—ze’s family even if you don’t understand hir one iota half the time, even if ze’s constantly on your nerves—but trying to get something like this through hir head is purely pain. It’s hard enough so much as getting hir attention given that ze’s generally in the vicinity of Neptune or something, mentally.

“How was _your_ shift?” you ask him.

Your partner does you the courtesy of waiting to swallow his mouthful of probably too many fries before he answers. “Some poor sap left their number on a fishing pole in the river because they took ‘there are plenty of fish in the sea’ too literally, not realizing that this would make them a prime target for pranking by rambunctious teens.”

It is not at all ladylike but you cannot help it in this instance: You snort. “No.”

“Yes,” Rufus says, with this look on his face like he’s not sure whether to laugh or be frustrated. The rowdy teens of Snowdin Forest are legend throughout the underground, constantly up to some form of hijinks or another despite receiving many talkings-to from the local guard, from Undyne, from Asriel, and from _Chara._ “This poor sap’s phone got all but detonated, it was tragic. I’m thinking about calling Holly down here to help, because this shit is _bananas.”_

“I would feel sorry for the teens, but someone has to keep them in line,” you say soberly. There’s a silly grin on your face, though, and you make no attempt to conceal it. “I’ll have to talk to Undyne to see if I can find an excuse to be in Snowdin for what I’m sure Chara would be calling the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny. This promises to be one for the history books.”

“Jesus, yeah, I’d bring popcorn if it wouldn’t be completely unprofessional,” Rufus agrees, and you both crack up.

 

 

It’s still early enough that Gerson is at the storefront, and it transpires that Liron is out with Astis again tonight, so you bring Rufus home with you. It is awkward, sometimes, that both of you still live with your families. There are not really places that are guaranteed to be private.

You lock the door behind you and turn on only the Christmas lights—they’re perfect mood lighting, keeping everything gauzy and soft while you sprawl across your wide bed like children, staring vaguely up at the canopy and holding hands in the near-dark.

“Decided what you’re gonna do about the ambassador thing yet?” Rufus asks without looking, and you frown at him because this is not your concept of ideal pillow talk at all.

“No,” you answer. “The sides of the scale are still exactly the same as when Chara and Asriel made the offer, Rufus. It’s tactically sound, but I don’t know if that justifies putting myself back in that sort of environment even on a short-term basis.”

He shrugs; his shoulders drag against your sheets. He’s playing with your fingers, soft and tickling and distracting, and honestly unfairly and inappropriately erotic for a moment like this when all he seems to want to do is talk shop. You don’t tell him to stop despite this because Rufus will just have to find a new way to fidget then—he is physically incapable of holding a hundred percent still for longer than a few minutes—and besides, you enjoy it despite yourself. Rufus has the toughest hands of any human in the underground, thick with work calluses; they’re also small and fine-fingered, only his thumbs and the heels of his palms blunt and dependable.

“We’ve all got gold, and that’s gonna count for a lot, even if the market value changes depending on how much the underground’s gonna be dumping into the surface world,” Rufus goes on, “but depending on what direction our illustrious leaders’re taking this, us Royal Guards may be out of a job eventually if we don’t take new positions. I ain’t any kinda genius, but it doesn’t take one to figure that human society won’t’ve changed enough that it’ll be _easy_ now for a couple of black trans people to make our way out there.”

You do not reply to this. When Rufus gets angry about human prejudices his accent gets more stubborn, where years of living here have otherwise mellowed it. You love his stubborn refusal to be anything other than what he is, but there’s some stupid menial conditioning in you that makes you antsy, like trace poisons. Your father spent a long time trying to scrape that out of you, polish you clean. Elocution and posture. _Young man, you know how to be pristine, you know you are better than everyone around you. No son of mine will let arrogant pale folk mistake him for a thug._

He’d say this like you didn’t grow up understanding viscerally that those in power and privilege could make any excuse they wanted to kill or abuse you, like if they did it would be your own fault for not being good enough. In your opinion it’s no coincidence that of all eight humans in the underground, only one of you is white. The rest of you—the human world likes to chew people like you up, spit you out, and then suck on your splintered bones for funsies. Rufus does not have to tell you this for you to understand.

But then, too, you’ve never lived poor. So maybe there are still some things that you’ll never understand no matter how much Rufus tries to tell you, unless those things happen to you.

“I dunno. You’d snap me in half if I tried to make the decision for you,” Rufus says, finally filling the thorny silence. “But at least it’d be a job.”

“It would be,” you say. “But I don’t know that the pickings are really so slim that that would be my only choice for one. And anyway, Chara wouldn’t leave us out in the cold.”

“Yeah,” Rufus says. Silence. He squeezes your hand so hard it hurts. “Innig, are you mad at me?”

“No,” you say, and sigh. “You’re not trying to force me to go fight politicians and my own old social caste. You’re just worried about our futures. So I’m not angry.”

“Okay,” he says, “good.” And he releases your hand, sits up, and hucks his shirt off.

For your part, you continue to lie where you are and enjoy the show. Rufus has more of a light scrappy build than a big bulky brick one like many of your fellow guards, but his back and stomach and arms are still corded with muscle that’s solid as steel. The gauzy low light of your room illuminates only the contours as if running a silvered brush along his outlines, while the rest of his skin is lit up in deep rosy browns.

He sprawls back down immediately after, hardly bouncing the mattress at all with you already weighing it down next to him. He’s already changed from binder to sports bra, you cannot help but notice, and you smile. The latter is (from everything you’ve ever been told by everyone you know with breasts, at least) easier on the ribs during intense aerobic activity.

Rufus catches your line of sight and smiles at you, half sardonic. He has a very mobile face, fine-featured and mercurial, and everything he feels always shows immediately in his expression. You could look at him all day.

“The first thing I do when we break the Barrier,” he says, “is I’m gonna figure out where the nearest Planned Parenthood is and I’m not gonna leave until I have scheduled my top surgery.”

You’re grinning. You can’t help it. “You don’t even have insurance. None of us do.”

“I can’t hear you over all this _gold_ I own,” he says. “Every day for thirty-two _years_ it has been the bane of my got damn existence that I can’t run around topless. No more of that shit. I am going fucking _titless_ and it is going to be _fucking amazing.”_

“I like a man who knows what he wants,” you say through your giggles. “Pursue your dreams. What are you going to do if we break the Barrier at night, or so early that they aren’t open.”

“I will deal with the crushing disappointment somehow, because I am a big boy,” Rufus says, and kicks you gently. You cross your arms over your face, still laughing. “What are _you_ going to do when we get out?”

“Well, I guess I may as well accompany you on Planned Parenthood Quest. I want more information about the different forms of body modification that are available before I decide whether there’s anything I want to do other than hair removal, but also legends tell that Planned Parenthood is a place where you can pick up that most elusive of treasures, human contraception.”

Next to you Rufus stills, and there’s a brief and awkward hush.

Sexwise your options have been limited and limited sorely for lack of birth control, a problem that none of your fellow fallen humans share—Liron and Astis have the same plumbing, Prase and Holly are both largely uninterested in sex, Frisk is still a child, and Chara is saved from popping out babies every year only by grace of being an enormous furry married to a large goat man.

But that will be different on the surface. There’s Planned Parenthood like you and Rufus have been joking about, of course, but aside from that condoms are available to buy in lots of places, down to corner convenience stores. You don’t think that _that_ will have changed so quickly in twenty years. You’ll be able to—try things. There are _so many ways_ you’ll be able to be in control of your own bodies that aren’t available to you right now.

“We _are_ gonna be free, huh,” Rufus muses, quiet; he’s probably thinking something along the same lines.

You turn your head to the side to watch him blinking up at the ceiling. He gazes silently for another few moments, and then true to type stretches his arms and legs out and rolls over to stare you directly in the face.

The angle is awkward for either of you to lean in, so instead you reach out and get your hands around his waist. He makes a small sound, eyes going very round, and when you pull him to rest on top of you with his knees at either side of your waist and hands on your shoulders, he shifts his weight willingly to help you do it.

And he leans down immediately and kisses you—your mouth, your face, your throat and chest, his body buzzing with energy, like he can’t pick a spot to land. You close your eyes instead of rushing him, but your hands knead at his hips all the same. He’s very warm and solid against your body, even though he’s so small; it chafes at your patience. You’ve spent so much time thinking, these past few days. It’s a welcome reprieve, being handed something more immediate and less complicated to focus on.

Rufus makes his way back up to your mouth eventually, giving you something to do besides letting him work you up. He’s almost feverishly intent, a rush of hurried kisses almost stumbling one after the next. At last you roll him over, a better angle for him to get his hands up along your thighs and under your skirt, and for you to work with his pants button. His pulse is as loud in the side of his throat as it is in your wrists and your groin, and when you shift—you have to shift—his motions are so impatient that he pulls the sheets askew with him as he edges back along the bed.

He almost yells once, you think, you hear the rush of him sucking in air, but he muffles it in a hand. Good; you don’t think your family is really _ignorant_ of why you like one on one time with your partner, but that doesn’t mean you want them listening in.

More space to be alone together. That’s another thing you have to look forward to, when you’re out of here.

 

 

You half wake up what must be hours later: Rufus is laying on your arm and probably has been for a while, as it’s now full of pins and needles. You shift him off, and swear as softly as you possibly can when your nerves start jangling in earnest. He grunts and rolls to the side a little but doesn’t rouse.

There’s so _much_ waiting for you out in the world: Good, bad. A lot of possibility. And you’re impatient for it, but before you can have that future, before you can even try to break the Barrier, there’s still one last hurdle remaining.

Only a few days left. You _will_ decide how to jump it before that deadline.


	6. we are a galaxy we crafted by our own bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter involves mention of transphobia and child abuse as well as some mild, brief depiction of body dysphoria.

“What is this,” Chara says, looking down their impressive nose at you. Their tone’s flat. It’s not really a question.

“A bicep supporter,” Innig replies for all three of you. She’s too tall for Chara to look down their nose at, but they still try, tilting their head back just a little. “Because we’ve all noticed that your arm has been bothering you more over the past few days, and an ounce of prevention is worth ten pounds of care.”

Chara narrows their eyes and makes a tiny sound of distaste in the back of their throat. “How many assistive devices do you think I wear on a day to day basis already?” (Six, you think, supporters for wrists and knees and ankles. No, wait, it’s eight. You forgot their gloves count as disability aids too. But this is a rhetorical question too, so you keep your mouth shut.) “I do not particularly take kindly to insinuations that I am really so decrepit, or all this mother hennish reminding that I am a cripple whose body is rapidly falling apart.”

“Chara, I say this with all the love and respect that I can muster: If you accuse me of mother henning even one more time I am going to personally feed you my fist.”

“Try me.”

“Chara, get over yourself,” Undyne cuts in, setting her hand on Innig’s shoulder and pushing her back a step. “It’d be completely the height of Stupid Mountain if you insisted on fighting us all to prove you’re capable in some weird throwback to that one time you and Asriel decided you had to duel to settle your differences. It’d be the idiot cherry on top of the moron sundae on top of Stupid Mountain if you insisted on doing that and then got f—got freakin’ hurt along the way. Can we just like, cut the melodramatic BS and get to the part where you put the bicep supporter on already?”

Chara’s still giving you and Undyne and Innig this _look_ like they might insist on the so-called melodramatic BS anyway just to prove none of you are the boss of them. They’re not even turning to look at Asriel, who’s watching with discomfort like he wants to weigh in on your side but can’t because he and Chara both know that Chara’s the boss of him.

They’re not looking at Frisk either, so you turn a little and sign _Batter up!_ at them.

Frisk makes a face at you. You shrug. They take a deep breath, steady themself, and approach their parent, reaching out to grab Chara’s sleeve and tug.

Chara stops glowering at the lot of you to look down at Frisk instead.

 _Will you please wear the thing?_ Frisk asks. _It would be safer and that’s what matters most, right?_

Chara looks at you and your girlfriend and your boss from the corner of their eye again like they’ve got half a mind to insist on fighting you all anyway just because. Then they cock their chin back and sigh, deflating almost comically. “Fine. _Fine._ I still think you’re all overreacting, but I don’t want to make you worry.”

And then they snatch the sleeve from Innig and pull it onto their right arm. It sits snug from just beneath their elbow to the top of their bicep, where their shoulder begins. And yeah, most people wouldn’t even, like, _notice_ this stuff if Chara were wearing their usual day clothes or even their formal monarch getup? But here in their exercise gear the black and gray of all their mobility aids against their almost-olive skin is real stark.

Chara’s got bags under their eyes and thin lines on their face, their hair’s nearly half gray, and you get the sudden and uncomfortable realization that they’re like— _old._ Yeah you and Prase aren’t _that_ far away from Chara’s forty, but the years’ve hit Chara so much harder. Prase has maybe five or six gray hairs like _in total._

Chara is patting Frisk’s hair while you’re preoccupied getting all existential. They point at you all with a judgmental forefinger. “Just so you all know, I hate every one of you,” they say without any venom.

Innig sighs a little from next to you. Undyne relaxes too.

Frisk goes off to pick up their stick. Asriel makes his doofy swords. Innig goes off to stretch, and Undyne is probably making spears judging by the sudden smell of ozone from behind you.

You stay where you are. Tighten your gloves some, itch the back of your leg with the top of your shoe a little.

Chara takes a deep breath. Their expression is sober as they reach out and call their trident out of nothing.

You’ve always liked watching them do this because it’s really honestly _cool—_ when they’re really showing off, easing into twirls and stuff before they’re even done summoning their weapon, the red light of the long long pole follows their hands like a ribbon. Like a snake.

Sometimes—usually, even—they do this quick and flashy as anything out of one of Alphys’ beloved anime series, so that all you can really track with your eyes is the red-lightning streak of light. They take it slower today. It’s hard for you to decide where you ought to look. Chara’s fingers tremble slightly like they’ve got a muscle twitch, and their hairpin keeps catching the light and distracting you. When the trident appears you watch the red light swirling despite yourself, out of habit.

Chara takes a deep breath and holds it. Their rings are bright in the morning light from outside. They exhale.

They’re looking at you. “What?”

You almost give in to your first instinct, which is to tell them that you’re pretty sure nobody was overreacting and something’s up with them. That would be bad. They would absolutely bite you for saying that to their face right now. So you don’t.

“I like it when you do the,” you twirl your wrist with one finger pointed out, “spinny thing.”

Chara stares at you for half a second and then laughs. More like a snort. The tension in their body relaxes and they face down for a moment.

“Sure, all right,” they say. “Enjoy the view.”

 

 

Some days you get assigned to Hotland with Innig. This is a lot of fun because you don’t usually get to work with her, and you think you make a good team. But it’s also hot as Satan’s buttcrack in a sauna, so. You like your personal stomping grounds here in Snowdin fine.

It can get a little bit boring from time to time just ‘cause there’s so little space in the underground anyway. But the cold makes it ideal for running around without worrying about overheating, and all the ice patches and hills mean you can basically platform everywhere. Which, in your extremely professional opinion, rules.

Undyne scheduled you to work with Papyrus for your morning shift. You mentored him through his whole trainee period, and you work together well, so you’re basically set up as partners now. It’s nice. Days when nothing’s really happening on patrol get to be more or less hangout sessions, and Papyrus has always got something to talk about. When most people drone on and on about stuff you have a real hard time paying attention, but on shifts you’re always moving, which helps. Plus Papyrus really cares about puzzles and cooking and friendventures. His passion helps you stay engaged.

And today’s topic, i.e. Papyrus’ upcoming job as one of the Royal Ambassadors, is especially relevant because of Innig.

“It is very hard work indeed!” Papyrus trumpets. He strokes his jaw as the two of you walk, and he’s got his chest puffed out pridefully too. “I had no idea that politics took this much studying. It is a challenge worthy of the Great Papyrus!! Truly, social interaction is the most difficult puzzle of them all.”

“You can do it,” you tell him. “Look at where you are now compared to when your family first moved here!”

“This is true!” Pause. “But in all fairness, I believe that I owe a great deal of thanks to you for that!”

“Nah. All I did was introduce you to people and give you some pointers. You managed the rest all by yourself.”

“Wowie! Do you really think so??”

You grin. “I sure do.”

It’s true that Papyrus definitely did a lot of floundering around when the Gaster family first arrived in Snowdin. His Great Papyrus act was loud and bewildering to the quiet townspeople, and he definitely came off as full of himself to more than a few folks. Which he’s not, at all. His love of attention and eagerness to please come a lot from his dad and older siblings all being famous and well-liked scientists. His boisterousness comes from taking truisms like “fake it ‘til you make it” and “always give the benefit of the doubt” real literally.

It probably never helped that he didn’t have that many friends his own age back in New Home anyway. He was always tagging along with his family or his family’s friends, the baby of your big social circle.

But all he really needed was for people to give him a chance. Following you and Sans around Snowdin, and being your sorta-apprentice, got him that chance.

“Anyway, like, you’re gonna get to test your cute mascot skills in the big kid pool real soon. And then you’ll see how right I am.” You stride out confidently over an icy patch, striking a cool pose along the way. Papyrus does that thing he does where he breaks physics a little to twirl up and away over the ice (skeletons are _weird)_ and sticks the landing with one foot up and both arms raised triumphantly.

You applaud for him. “10/10, perfect form, as expected of the underground’s number one professional jogboy!”

“Thank you, thank you!” Papyrus bows in three directions, waving to the imaginary crowd. He’s been watching too many MTT shows, probably.

The heels of your sneakers fetch up against the snowbank, and you step back into the slush for more secure footing. It melts into your pant legs a little, cold on your ankles. Big deep breath: Snow and pine, as familiar as the creases in your fingers or the faded abs you drew on your bandanna to mark it as Really Yours like twenty-five whole years ago.

“The crowd goes wild for the dashing jogboy. He’s bathing in a shower of rose petals. Interviewers are lined up waiting for him to regale us with tales of his prowess.”

Papyrus scampers over to you, kicking up snow. You shift your weight from foot to foot until he catches up and you can keep walking down your patrol route.

“What would the interviewer like to know?” Papyrus asks cheerfully.

You weren’t expecting him to keep up the silly roleplay, so it takes you a minute to think of what to ask. “What do you actually learn in your lessons with Asgore and Toriel? All I can really think of is like—learning laws and a bunch of different ways to bow and scrape to people.”

“There is _some_ bowing and scraping and law-learning,” Papyrus answers, actually seriously. “But! A lot more of it is _puzzles!_ I was not expecting diplomacy to be so fun and accessible but apparently Their Former Majesties aren’t even dumbing it down for me?? We once spent a whole afternoon on a book of pretendy fun logic games as a warm-up!”

You would’ve guessed that this is just another way that monsters teach according to a student’s needs. They didn’t make you sit still at a desk in a row of desks until you started to wilt like an overcooked pepper when you were at school, and all. “That’s really how they teach you??”

“Yes!! I am good at being very cute and charming! But I am told that I still need work in debating, and making sure that I do not sacrifice or give up on the things that I am trying to argue for in order to make the other person happy.”

He pauses and frowns here. “Astis continually tells me that I must be less charitable because human politicians are so very ‘cut throat’!” He lifts his hands and makes large finger quotes. You nearly trip and embarrass yourself because your gaze swings from one hand to the other, your attention all on the movement instead of where you’re putting your feet. Papyrus graciously ignores this. “But! I am not good at being uncharitable and I do not have a throat available for cutting! So, you see!! Being suspicious may simply have to be Astis’ job.”

That’s not really Astis’ strong suit either, though. You guess Chara’s pretty guarded, and Papyrus and Astis will be doing a lot of goodwill ambassadoring, but you kinda get why the royal couple wants Innig in on the ambassador thing, even temporarily. She’s much better at being ruthless and paranoid than these two good-natured bleeding hearts.

“I do confess,” Papyrus says while you’re mulling this over, “it would be heartening to have Innig on our side. But I think you would be better at encouraging her to help us than me.”

You tilt your head back and exhale. Your breath vanishes against the distant dark-gray fog that blocks out the cave ceilings in Snowdin. “I think this’s still gonna be up to her. She’s not a self-sacrificing person, and she’s got good reasons why she doesn’t want to do politics. If she does decide to join you guys it’ll be ‘cause she’s decided for herself that the benefits outweigh the costs.”

“That is true. Well! I suppose that it would be a poor show of friendship to make Innig into an experiment of my burgeoning diplomacy skills! And if she did not always make the truest choice for herself, she would no longer be Innig!”

You stretch until you feel the pull in your shoulders, going up on your toes with effort. The cold is brisk and comforting and fills you with energy.

“Y’know what, Papyrus? You are very right.”

“Nyeh! But of course!”

 

 

Grillby’s is the best restaurant in the underground bar none. Given the choice it’s always where you go on lunch break. Your only complaint about the place is and has always been the lack of meat on the menu. But up until just recently, the thought of getting meat at Grillby’s has always been one of those impossible wishes—like getting to grow an extra three or four inches. Or marrying Innig under an open sky.

Growing any more at this point is out of the question, but Grillby cooking Real Meat someday at least is starting to seem a lot more possible.

Papyrus is the underground’s number one grease hater as well as its number one jogboy, and does not come with you. Which is fine, Grillby’s can get pretty crowded even without extra skeleton buddies.

Today all the regulars are here: The drunk bunny and the big-mouthed monster in booths, Lesser Dog playing a one-dog game of poker in the corner, the hamster by the jukebox and the bird and fish at the bar. Sans too, sitting at his usual seat. The tails of his lab coat are dragging on the floor as he slumps forward. Grillby’s daughter and Holly are both in school right now, so only Grillby himself is manning the bar.

You hop up on the bar stool next to Sans. “’Sup Grillby. I want the regular, please.”

Grillby nods and disappears into the back. You lean on the counter and regard Sans.

For the past… jesus, you don’t even know, Sans has been a low-energy dude. Comes with the depression territory, you guess? But today he’s so sedentary that just _looking_ at him makes you want to stand up and dance, it makes you so antsy.

“What’s eating you?” you ask.

He grunts in response.

The red bird on his other side leans around to grin at you. “Same as it’s been the past couple days. Somebody doesn’t care for baby bro leaving the nest.”

“Man, _still?”_ Sans doesn’t dignify that with an answer. “Dude—you have _got_ to chill. Let Papyrus live his life, y’know?”

Sans grunts again, this time more angrily. You sigh. There’s not much point arguing with this. He’ll get used to it eventually. You sit and bounce your knee until Grillby comes out with your fries and burger and slaw.

You reach for the ketchup to find that Sans is in the process of grabbing it.

“That was for _me,”_ you tell him loudly. He just ignores you and does that gross thing where he unscrews the cap and drinks straight from the bottle.

What feels like a solid five minutes of chugging later, Sans rests the ketchup bottle on the bar and turns to you. He’s got red smudges on his wide grin. Nasty.

“You still want?”

“I don’t want your weird magic skeleton backwash. Keep it.”

“Cool, I’ll do that.”

Across the counter, Grillby gives a small crackly sigh and fetches another ketchup bottle from lower than you can see. Truly, he is the hero that none of you deserve.

“Y’know, you _really_ shouldn’t be hitting that stuff so hard this early in the day,” says the red bird sensibly.

“Screw you and the fish you rode in on.” (“Hey,” says the fish from the other end of the bar.) _“You_ don’t have a little bro who’s determined to throw himself to the wolves.”

“This isn’t something to be rude to your own friends about,” you tell him.

Sans swivels back around to face you. He’s doing the thing where he makes his eye sockets go dark to try to look extra intimidating. “You know how much my bro looks up to you. Don’t you care about his safety? Or do you wanna go, buddy?”

Jesus. “I don’t ‘wanna go’, I wanna eat my lunch in peace without having to deal with a bar brawl. But for the record, I think it’s real dumb to get all overprotective and controlling over Papyrus. He’s a grown-up who can make his own life choices. Let him have his moment. This wasn’t cute when Asriel was doing it to Chara and it’s not cute coming from you either.”

Sans makes his eyes come back, glowing and blue. “Yeah? Well—”

He is interrupted by a long white hand clapping him on his shoulder. Everyone jumps, including you.

The hand retracts. _Son, I believe it is time for you to stop antagonizing your fellow patrons and return to work. Prase sent me a message to inform me that you’re overdue at the lab,_ Gaster says with a very mild expression on his face.

Sans doesn’t backtalk his old man. He just grunts and slides off the bar stool, shoves hands in his pockets, slouches off towards the door.

 _Sans will be back tonight to pay off his tab,_ Gaster says, genteel, to Grillby, who nods. Then he turns and leaves also, one elegant sweep of long black coat.

You slowly turn away from gawking to look at the red bird, who’s got the same expression on their face as you. They mouth holy shit!!!!!!!!! at you, and you whisper got damn!!!!! back. The doors close behind Gaster. Everyone giggles nervously.

In the corner, the hamster queues up a song on the jukebox. Sounds of conversation gradually return. You devour your lunch—you haven’t got long ‘til you’re back on shift.

“Eh,” says the bird. “Sans’ll get his head out of his butt sooner or later. Though I gotta say, I’m hoping for sooner, myself.”

You swallow your fry mouthful. “I’d bet on sooner, too, ‘cause forget about Gaster. _Prase_ isn’t gonna put up with his shit.”

“The fireworks are gonna be _something,”_ the bird agrees. “I’m glad I probably won’t be around to watch ‘em.”

You nod fervently, swing your feet, and take another bite.

 

 

Papyrus goes straight from lunch break to more emergency ambassador lessons, so you’re left to do your afternoon shift by yourself.

Rounds with your younger partner are more structured. He likes routines, and he also likes to go recalibrate his puzzles once per day. Or rearrange them completely, if he’s gotten bored with one. So you’ve gotta go from town to the door to Home at least once per day for that.

That alone makes solo shifts a relief, ‘cause you love Papyrus but _god_ rigid routines are _super boring_ and sometimes you just want to run around wherever whimsy takes you.

So today you wander around Snowdin Town for a while first. You straighten up the gifts underneath the Christmas-esque Gyftrot tree with help from some of the bear and rabbit monsters. You look in on the slime family’s game of Monsters and Humans. You say hello to the Riverperson.

With nothing else in obvious need of your Royal Guardly assistance, you head for the town entrance and jog lightly across the long bridge. Aside from your parents and Lesser Dog, most of the Guard dogs tend to stick to their posts. That means there’s more responsibility put on you and Papyrus to help keep the teens out of trouble.

A quick detour shows you that at least the teens are out of Gyftrot’s antlers for today; there’s no one anywhere near Glyde’s cave but them.

Snowdin Forest has been a favored loitering spot for teens since you were a kid. Some of this is probably because some monsters age slower than humans. More is just because as handfuls of teens decide to go home, new ones come take their place. Snowy the Snowdrake, for instance, used to run away from home to camp out down here until he made up with his dad for good and started work at the MTT hotel two years ago. Some of his buddies still live here.

The teens are a mostly harmless nuisance. Pissing off poor Gyftrot is a time-honored tradition, and lately somebody (Jerry, you suspect) has been altering Lesser Dog’s snow sculptures so that they’re anatomically correct. But the most trouble they tend to get into is getting stuck in Papyrus’ puzzles, being rude to people, and worrying their parents. Which is downright cute compared to packs of bullies back in Ebott Town, so you’ll take it.

Speaking of teens, you find one near Lesser Dog’s unoccupied station. It’s Snowy’s friend Chilldrake, pushing their shades up stoically. Their free claw is busy fixing a wiener snowdog back into an ordinary snowdog.

“Not your personal flavor of anti-authoritarianism?” you call, grinning.

Chilldrake puffs themself up. “I’m all for tearing down the system, but jokes like this ain’t being radical, Lesser Dog works hard on these. Snowy’s jokes are cooler, and they _don’t_ revolve around dicks.”

“I guess dick jokes are kinda passé.” They’re funny, though. Then again, maybe you only think so because you don’t have one. You’d ask Innig what her thoughts on them are, but you’ll probably forget by the time you see her later today. “So what _are_ the new hip memes?”

“It doesn’t matter, ‘cause they’re just empty trends. I’m thinkin’ about reviving Dadaism.”

“Ooh, nostalgic. I think that was the hip thing on the internet when I was a kid on the surface.”

Chilldrake considers this, seeming a little deflated that their bright idea has been used so recently. Then they shrug it off the way that only a young hipster can. “Whatever. I got an appointment with Politics Bear to bone up on my theory.”

Your eyebrows go up. Maybe Chilldrake’s going to graduate their wild teen era even sooner than you expected. “You’re studying _political theory?_ Whatever happened to your anarchy shtick?”

“Gotta know your enemy to disassemble your enemy,” says Chilldrake, and they give you some sort of weird ironic youth salute as they pass you.

Gazing around, you note that they’ve only managed to fix about half the wiener dogs. Big sigh. Maybe it’s jumping the gun after all to hope that their rebellious stage’ll be over around when the Barrier breaks.

Hands still snowy from emergency sculpture repair, you pass a cluster of Ice Caps playing with Alphys’ tile puzzle. Your parents aren’t patrolling near their station—you’ve probably missed them along the way.

Next up is Ball Game, which used to distract the hell out of you when you were just a trainee. You buy a lemon bar from the Nice Cream guy as a reward for resisting its siren call and forge onwards.

You get as far as Doggo and Endogeny’s station and then turn back. There’s another Snowdrake being followed around by Jerry as they skate across the ice pond. You eyeball them both for a while to make sure they’re not getting up to anything too obnoxious (they’re not) and continue down the road.

Ball Game is even more tempting on the way back. This time you can’t help yourself, and spend ten giddy minutes booting the snowball around like you’re half your age. Usually you get the orange or blue flag, but every now and then you manage to hit red.

(You get yourself another lemon bar to celebrate. In your defense, you’re _hungry,_ and you’re supporting the local economy.)

Still panting a little, you jog over to Papyrus’ spaghetti station. The fresh plate he put here only this morning is already frozen solid. Looks like the mouse has at least gotten to snack on it some today.

Footsteps crunch in the snow, and a voice from your right says “Oh! Howdy!”

You look up. It’s Asriel.

“Fancy meeting you here,” you say. He grins at you winningly.

“I’m picking up Frisk from tutoring today, so I figured I’d go meet them and their buddy on the way. Do you want to come along?”

“It is technically in my patrol area,” you say, and fall into step with him.

“How’s today been?”

You shrug. You’ve got to walk two steps to every one of Asriel’s, so you’re kinda trotting to keep up, despite his efforts to move slowly. Not that it’s hard to maintain the pace. You’re just getting hot, and there’s too many people around right now to play Take Off Your Shirt And Put It Back On When Your Body Temp Drops. “Mostly uneventful? Teens like dick jokes and Sans is still mad that Papyrus took the job. He’s—Papyrus—has been telling me about training.”

Asriel laughs a little and shrugs his big shoulders. “Chara and I owe Mom and Dad one, for sure. We could _not_ have handled teaching Astis and Papyrus along with all the other stuff we’re doing lately. I mean even if the plan does work it’s not like we’re all going to bellyflop into… uh, various things all at once, but I almost hope it falls through just so that we have more breathing room. We are kind of speedrunning a purely disgusting amount of malarkey, here.”

You gaze out over the tops of conifers and contemplate a little how it feels to live in a nation ruled by a king who uses the terms “speedrunning” and “malarkey” in the same sentence.

“Maybe at this rate we’ll just clip straight through the Barrier without any drama, though,” Asriel goes on. “That would be nice.”

“How are you all holding up, anyway? Chara seems kinda… stressed.”

“We’re definitely all stressed. Chara brought up what’s sort of the Nightmare Scenario, Frisk’s parents coming out of the woodwork to dispute custody. Judging by what Frisk’s told us about their old home life I think that’s _super_ unlikely, but Frisk overheard us talking about it, and. Whoof.”

“Shit,” you say, for lack of anything better.

“Super shit,” Asriel replies. “So we’re throwing together a backup plan in case that happens _while_ we’re checking in on Alphys finishing setting up the machines, and while we’re making plans for exactly how we want to make contact with… everyone else out there, _and_ getting Papyrus and Astis up to speed, AND keeping the kingdom running like in general.”

“No wonder Chara’s been so snappy if you’re dealing with all that.”

“It’s been a really rough week. It’s going to keep being a rough week tomorrow and the next day, I think. The day after that, though, I guess we just roll the dice and see how they land. Which is simple enough in comparison.”

You look up at him. He’s sort of looking at you from the corner of his eye as he walks. His breath steams in the air and his ears are flopping around in a way that reminds you of your parents.

“If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”

“Gosh, Rufus, you’re _already_ helping. You and everybody in the Royal Guard keep the wheels greased and moving all through the whole underground so that Chara and I don’t have to run in yelling and waving our arms when we’re already full up on ridiculous stuff to deal with.

“Plus, knowing you, I bet you’re helping be Innig’s sounding board while she decides what she’s going to do about the job offer. And that’ll help her come to a decision sooner, which’ll go on to help _us_ figure out what we’re doing with the results of that decision. You’re doing great.”

“Uh—thanks, I guess?”

You’re rescued from trying to figure out a more detailed response by the arrival of Frisk and MK, who are both trotting up the road carrying their school stuff.

“Oh hey!” calls MK. “’Sup, Mr. Dreemurr and Mr. Dogi!”

You stand up a little straighter. _God_ you love being called mister.

“How was tutoring?” you ask.

Frisk shrugs and makes a face. They jog up to their adoptive father and grab his sleeve, getting your whole party going.

You have an actual explanation for why Frisk’s been so attached to their parents now, you realize. It should be good to understand, but it makes you uneasy in some way you can’t put a finger on.

There’s no real worry of Frisk getting taken away from the Dreemurrs. Chara would personally commit murder to keep their precious child from being sent back to their birth parents or shunted into the foster system. They’d commit _several_ murders. No, you’re not concerned about Frisk at all, except for how their fear is making them feel.

So why are you still worried? Chasing after the answer in your head doesn’t make it pop out immediately, and it’s hard to concentrate on that when Asriel and MK and Frisk are all chatting. Hopefully if you even remember thinking about this later, you’ll have a better answer then.

The trip back across Snowdin Forest goes at a slow and steady pace, which is good because it means this is slow enough to count as your patrol. Hellos and how are yous are exchanged every time your party runs into other Guards. It is maybe a good thing that Chara isn’t here, you consider when Frisk holds you up for a moment to pet Lesser Dog. Chara would keep everyone here for an hour, until Lesser Dog’s neck was coiled up around you all like a boa constrictor.

Asriel buys everybody Nice Cream because he is just an all-around good dude. You eat yours right away. (MK stares at you in horror that might even be genuine the whole while.)

You note to your relief that Jerry hasn’t yet come back to add unnecessary junk to Lesser Dog’s snowdogs again. Good; it would be such a pain if you’d had to correct them all with Asriel and the kids making potty jokes behind your back where you couldn’t even join in.

Asriel and Frisk split off to the Riverperson’s ferry once you hit town. You see them off with a wave. No need to hold them up when they’ve got so much on their plates.

“Later, dude,” MK tells you once father and child have left. “I’m gonna eat my ice cream in my _nice warm house,_ y’know, like a _normal person.”_

“You’d be able to eat it outside if you just kept active enough, kid.”

“I don’t even wanna know what would be ‘active enough’ to not die of frostbite from that.”

You let them go. It’s the end of your shift, anyway—which means time to go home and relax until it’s time to see Innig tonight.

 

 

The couch is open at home, so you stretch out on it and stare up at the shelf of Nose Nuzzle Championship trophies. (There are a _lot_ of second place trophies, but your folks always get first whenever Asgore and Toriel don’t compete.) It’s good to get off your feet for a while after charging around all day, so you close your eyes and scrunch your toes.

Your dad’s in the kitchen, clattering around. He’s a more patient cook than your mom is, more careful, and produces more reliable results. Your mom’s the one with the flashes of inspiration or improvisation that can turn out weird. She also rushes things and doesn’t always cut ingredients neatly.

Not that you can claim any better. You’re absolutely elbows at doing anything more complicated than heating up pre-prepared or instant food on the stovetop. It’s a bad idea for somebody who’s both impatient and easily distracted to do intensive cooking. You’re fine with eating raw fruits and vegetables and cereal out of the box when left to your own devices, though, it doesn’t bother you.

“(Don’t fall asleep,)” your mom tells you. She pokes you in both cheeks when you don’t open your eyes right away, pads tough and coarse on your skin. You give in and open them to see her feathery tail waving.

It threw you repeatedly for your first month here just how closely the dog monsters sometimes resemble normal non-magical dogs. They walk on two feet, they talk, they make and eat people food. But they’re also all very happy and very playful. They all have better noses than they have eyes—it’s most pronounced for Doggo, but their vision’s best at noticing movement, and most of them are at least partially colorblind. It’s been a long time, but your mind still boggles over how your adoptive parents thought for over a year that your eyes were brown. You and the handful of your other birth sibs with green eyes used to get _so much shit_ for it at school.

It still throws you sometimes. Your parents are dogs, who pet each other, and pet you, and you pet them. When roughhousing together in the forest, your family _literally_ plays fetch, taking turns throwing and fetching. Even in terms of humans with monster families, yours sticks out.

“(You smell like you’re thinking about something complicated,)” your mother says, and pinches your cheeks until you can’t help but laugh. You’re pretty sure she’s actually the smartest and cleverest person you know. Even smarter than Chara, or Prase, or Toriel.

“It’s nothing,” you answer. “I just have the surface on the brain.”

“(Aha,)” she answers. The tail wagging speeds up. “(It’s still going to take a few days for that problem to really ‘surface’, though, so you may as well focus on other things in the meantime. Such as not being late for your date.)”

You groan. “Mom, I’m not gonna be late!”

“(Just making sure.)” The tip of her cold nose bumps your forehead. “(You smell like you need a shower, and I think Innig would appreciate having a dapper darling date at the fancy resort instead of my tracksuit boy.)”

 _“Mom.”_ But you’re laughing, so she has basically already won. “Okay, okay, I’ll go get dressed.”

She breathes out sharply with a little whuff of air against your hair and pats your shoulder. “(That’s my good boy.)” And then she leaves for the kitchen, probably to bother your dad. Her nails clatter on the kitchen linoleum.

You grunt and hoist yourself up. Better get that shower over and done with so you can change.

The shower, and your room, are both on the second floor. The bathroom’s cluttered with toiletries and too small for all three of you to stand at the mirror at the same time, and someone (usually you or your dad) has to empty out the hair catcher in the drain at least once a week. But the hot water comes on a lot faster than your surface townhouse’s ever did, so that’s all right.

(You keep the lights off, and when you have to wash your body you close your eyes. It helps a little but not a lot—you still have to use your hands.)

The only problem left is getting dressed.

It would be nice to wear a binder for the rest of today. But you can’t afford to compress your ribcage if you’re gonna be running around in Hotland, so sports bra again it is.

You have very few things that count as “nice” clothes. Most of your stuff’s well-worn and easy to run around in ‘cause that’s what your job requires and what you like to do anyway. You have two (2) pairs of Actual Slacks and one (1) starched button down shirt in your entire wardrobe.

It’d be tacky to wear the exact tailored outfit you had to the royal wedding on a date with your girlfriend, probably, you think??? So you wear the black slacks instead of the blue and don’t put on the sky-colored waistcoat with your shirt.

Good enough, probably…? Definitely. Primping for eight hours is too much trouble. If Mettaton complains about you being too scruffy for his fancy ass diner you’ll kick his tin-can ass.

Ducking back into the bathroom to check your reflection, you decide that even if maybe you fall short of your mom’s pronouncement of “dapper” you still look fine. You’re not sweaty from work and you’ve pressed most of the wet out of your curls; it’s good enough.

You stick your phone in your pocket and clomp back down the stairs. Your parents are in the kitchen, setting out their own dinner.

“Heading out now?” asks your dad.

“Yeah,” you answer. “I’ve got my phone, so call me if something comes up, ok?”

Your dad’s heavy brows have come down, and he sniffs in your direction briefly. “Hold on a minute, son.”

 _“Daaaaaaaaad,”_ you whine as he licks his thumb and starts fussing with your hair.

“There you go,” he announces proudly. “Have fun on your date!”

Sigh. “I will.”

 

 

You absolutely cannot stand Mettaton.

You have never liked him, ever, not when he was a giant calculator and not before he got a body and was just Innig’s weird ghost friend either. You don’t like his sparkly pink aesthetic, you don’t like his monopoly on entertainment in the underground, and you super hate his world-revolves-around-me attitude.

You have, on more than one occasion, commiserated with Undyne over your mutual inability to understand why your girlfriends like the guy so much.

But, well, Innig does like him, probably because they share hobbies, so you do your best to stay out of Mettaton’s stupid anime coif and hope that he’ll stay out of your hair in return.

Luckily Mettaton is off on some stupid show recording today and won’t actually be at his hotel to give you grief. But this glittering and glamorous world he represents is still one you only feel comfortable in from time to time. Hell, your _literal royal family_ lives way more humbly than all this ritz.

The big receptionist checks the list of reservations for your name, giving you the leeway to pick lint off your slacks and flick it to the floor with a fingernail. “Back corner,” they announce at last, pointing with a fin.

You turn and look, and oh shit, there she is.

She’s talking to Astis, who’s in uniform with his mop of curls pulled back into a tail, and both of them are illuminated by the soft pastel light of a bellflower-shaped table lamp. The diner lights are turned down because there’s some singer you don’t really care about up onstage: The effect on Innig’s dark skin and hair and her shimmery white dress is dramatic. Every time you ever see her is a fresh reminder that she’s the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen in your life.

You stick to the back wall making your way over to her. Don’t wanna block anybody’s view, if any of the other patrons are actually watching. (That’s mean, a little, because Mettaton extremely doesn’t bother with lackluster acts. You just only have eyes for Innig. Then again, that’s hardly your fault.)

She smiles at you when you’re close enough to pull out your chair and sit down, all dark twinkling eyes and dimples and a mouth so plush you genuinely expect to melt into a puddle on the floor and evaporate.

“You should make the effort to dress up like this more often,” she says, reaching across the table to you. “It looks good.”

You take her hand in yours and press a kiss to her knuckles, staring straight across the table at her to watch her cheeks darken. She’s painted her nails in something opalescent and glittery to match her dress. You could never be this put together all the time, so all you can do is look on in awe. “Thanks, you too.”

“Do you want the usual?” Astis asks, and you jump a little because you almost forgot he was there, oops.

“Yeah, sure,” you tell him, and he beams and gives you a thumbs up and scurries off.

“Busy day?” Innig asks. You shrug. “Same here. I think I attempted to accost Liron at least three times on varying issues and ze managed to slip away eventually each time. Lots of small incidents to resolve. Nothing overly taxing, but just—the volume, you know?”

You do know, and you tell her about Sans and the snowdogs and Chilldrake while you both wait for Astis or one of the waitstaff to come bring dinner.

“I got to see Asriel today too,” you go on. “He seems… uh, kinda stressed. I tried asking him about what’s up with him and Chara and Frisk lately, and…”

Innig raises her eyebrows at you. “Did he actually give any kind of real answer?”

“Sorta? Apparently they’re worrying about Frisk’s birth parents making trouble. I don’t know if that’s all of it or not, but I guess that makes sense.”

Innig narrows her eyes and looks at her glass. “I suppose. Too much stress does tend to strain one’s health, and Chara is getting older…”

It’s an important thing to be talking about, but it’s also ruining the atmosphere of your date a little, so you change the topic: “Anyway, the teens are spared from having Holly sicced on them for _now._ I think it’s pretty cute that Chilldrake has gone from being a rebel without a cause to a blossoming anarchist.”

This makes Innig laugh. “Christ, I don’t know whether to be charmed at the thought of Chilldrake one day getting out in the world and fighting the Man or worried that the poor kid will be in over their head.”

You groan a little. “I do hope that things have gotten better out there than how we remember them being.”

Innig makes a small noise of assent. “It would be pretty anticlimactic if we were to get outside and then have our illustrious monarchs decide that we’re going right back in the mountain.”

“At least if we made a new Barrier we’d be able to take it down whenever we want to check on stuff every once and a while? It’s _safe_ down here, yeah, it’s way nicer than it is on the surface, but it’s… like. There’s no room for monsters to grow, and there’s a lot outside that nobody’s got here.”

“It’s stagnant, yes.” Innig raises her head. She’s got on those long glittery earrings that she only wears off of work, and they sparkle along the cool brown column of her throat, twinkling against the cloud of her ‘fro like stars. “And there is something to be said for the way everyone will finally get to make their own choice about whether they’d like to take the risk.”

You nod, and are saved by having to come up with something else to say by your server arriving. Can’t afford to spill the beans to civilians just yet.

Innig ordered—seemingly before you arrived—the steak in the shape of Mettaton’s face, and you have to cover your mouth with both hands to keep from shrieking with laughter at the outlandish tofu confection in the middle of a smooth jazz performance. Your girlfriend watches you with the demurest of smiles and twinkling eyes, and delicately picks up her cutlery. Teakettle sounds escape between your fingers. You are okay with this.

 

 

With dinner over the two of you do what you always do when both your families are at home, i.e. you rent a room at the MTT resort.

You hate giving the narcissistic pop star your money—especially because the nightly rate here is so _unnecessarily_ high—but the couple’s suite is absolutely massive, maybe three times the size of your room at home. The bed alone is big enough for two or three adult Boss Monsters to sleep in together, and all the furniture is super high quality.

The only real complaint you’ve got with the suite aside from it being Mettaton’s and getting gouged by the receptionist is that the lights can never be turned completely off. Enough customers gently complained that Mettaton equipped the lamps with various mood lighting settings, but the only off button is a building-wide power outage. And with the Core right behind it, that virtually never happens.

Innig switches the lamps to something low that changes colors periodically. You step on the heels of your shoes to take them off and flop down on the bed.

“If you want to talk shop,” Innig says, “can we please get it out of the way first? It’s desperately unsexy and depending on how serious it is, it takes a _while_ to get the mood back.”

You stick your feet up in the air. “I’m _sorry_ already, jeez.” When she doesn’t answer even after half a minute, you twist your hips to slam your legs against the bed. You’re not looking, but you can feel by the way the mattress shifts that she’s sat down on the opposite side.

“What are you doing about the ambassador job?”

She sighs. You’ve heard a lot of Innig sighs over the course of your friendship and romance, so this one’s easy to identify as private aggrievement. “I still haven’t quite decided. But I’m giving Chara and Asriel an answer by tomorrow. This is not a situation where it’s in any way permissible to string them out.”

You nod, hair crinkling under your head as you move against the mattress. It’s a weird feeling and you don’t like it, so you roll onto your side, which just makes your curls scratch against your cheek. God, you wish you had the right hair texture for cornrows: They’re manly, you can do all kinds of cool shit with them, and from your vague memories of your older brothers they take less maintenance.

“…Hearing about the whole potential sitch with Frisk’s parents was weird,” you say. “I’ve been thinking about my life on the surface all day. I don’t—usually think about my old home life that much, in general, for obvious reasons.”

Innig does not reply to this.

“I wonder if my blood family’s still living in Ebott Town.”

Innig remains silent.

“I’ve started to think about like—what it would be like to meet them. Like jesus fuck, that would be awkward. I don’t look that much different from when I did when I ran away, but—they’d expect me at this age to be a different gender and going by a different name. So like, I hope they’d just be like, oh, he reminds me of Deadname Censored For The Sake Of Rufus’ Sanity. And I’m old enough that like—even if I saw them they wouldn’t be able to do anything.”

“My father was going to send me to a corrective therapy camp,” Innig interrupts. You shut up right away.

She’s silent for an almost unbearable stretch of time. Holding still feels like you’re rotting from the inside out, but you’re too afraid of making any wrong moves. You’re just starting to wonder if that was all she wanted to say and you’ve frozen for no good reason when she goes on.

“That was just about my gender, too, and not my sexuality.” Even without looking into her face you know exactly what expression she’s making: That brittle and obviously fake smile. “I have no idea whether he is still living in Ebott Town. Holly might know because of her father, but there are _many_ reasons why I have no desire to ask her.” Innig doesn’t elaborate here, but you can imagine. “If my supposed death ever became public, I can see him leaving the area to save his reputation. His circle was very conservative and the suicide of one’s son and heir would be a blemish.

“Then again, he was also in a position to obscure the details, and the death or disappearance of my mother did not deter him from his enterprises either.”

Innig falls silent again here. It’s too awkward to just keep lying on the bed in a stupid pose like some sort of prey animal, so you push yourself up and twist around. She has her back to you.

Carefully you stand. The lamps are still on their silly color-change mood lighting setting, but maybe if you turned them up brighter Innig would stop talking.

“It isn’t so much that he does not know my preferred name and would not recognize me, because there is that, but that if he is still in the area we _will_ meet. If I am to take the job. I am— _disgusted_ —with my own cowardice. I am in a unique position to do far-reaching good because of who and what I am. But I don’t want to see that man ever again.”

You stand and skirt the edges of the bed on quiet feet, and sit at arm’s length from Innig. She has her face in her hands, bent like—like _The Thinker_ on the edge of the bed. Her feet, long and bare and elegant, are curled on the floor. The calluses and perpetual bruises on her toes from standing on pointe in her ballet shoes look like black velvet in this light.

“I am so _consumed_ with the fear of meeting him, and the anger at myself for turning back into a helpless child with that fear, that I cannot even think about this decision rationally. It’s _humiliating.”_ Her voice is tense, strained. She runs her hands up her face heels first, pressing at her eyes, as if this will prevent you from seeing that her cheeks are wet. “I’ve been trying not to think about it all this time, to not even acknowledge it. And it’s not like this problem is going to go _away_ if I just insert my head into the nearest sandbank.”

“Hey.” You lay your hands on her shoulders. “If this is too much—you can tell Asriel and Chara to go fuck themselves, okay? Asriel might not be able to really _get it_ like a hundred percent, but I’m pretty sure Chara’s got enough horror stories of their own to understand what they were asking of you. They won’t pitch a fit if you tell them no.”

“I _know that,”_ Innig says, her face creasing. She still won’t take her hands away from her eyes. This is just making the trails of her tears run in weird ways. The lamps light them up in shifting pastels against her skin.

“And if you still want to do this—look—I will _personally_ march up to your old man and tell him to choke on his own dick if he so much as _thinks_ about coming near you after all this time. He’s the real problem here. If not for him you wouldn’t have anything to be scared of.” Your face feels hot as you squeeze Innig’s shoulders. “Anything that gets in your way, anything that threatens you—I’ll be here to protect you, okay? I won’t let any of that stuff touch you ever again if it’s in my power.”

She lowers her hands at this, finally, to look you full in the face.

“I’m serious about this,” you say a little awkwardly. Take a deep breath and raise your hands to frame her face lightly, lean in and press your forehead to hers. “I will always be on your side. I will always be here to stand between you and bad things. So let me—if there are things you wanna do but that you’re too scared to, let me help. I—” fuck, your face is probably on fire by now. “I love you. I wanna protect you. I know it sounds super dumb but—”

“It doesn’t,” Innig interrupts right when you start to flounder, “so don’t undersell yourself.”

You shift so that you can hug her. Part of the reason you’re attracted to Innig at all is that she’s so big and strong, but she’s not invincible. And in times like this when she’s feeling vulnerable, it’s so _fucking_ frustrating to be so short. To be too small even to properly shield her with your body, to make her feel safe just with your presence.

“I’ll hold you to it,” Innig says out of nowhere.

“Huh?”

“You—” she falls silent here, then continues, strained again “—you said that you’ll protect me, so you had better make good on it.”

Your stomach does a backflip a little bit. This is the sort of conversation where maybe it would’ve been better to have a ring already picked out and on hand, or something.

Innig shifts and resettles, her forehead against your shoulder. Jesus mary and fuckening joseph, you’re going to die. “Protect me.”

You grip the back of her dress in both hands. “If it kills me.”

“I would rather you live for me instead, you know.”

 

 

Like Innig said before, talking shop _does_ generally turn out to be totally unsexy and a super mood killer, but you’ll let the serious stuff have those Execution Points for free today.

You’ve both gone through so much to get here. You _will not_ let anything stand in the way of either of you getting to enjoy your freedom.


	7. we had nothing left but hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bonus warnings for this chapter include: discussion of past trauma and child abuse, briefly implied past sexual assault/csa.
> 
> the exchange about "the baby is you" was suggested by light_rises. THANKS LIGHT YOURE BRILLIANT

“I need to take a short break.”

Practically speaking, you could bear with things for a while longer if you had to. But the sensation of lying in the uncomfortable harness and half helmet of the portable SSS units with your soul half tethered to your body is deeply unpleasant: Just exactly the sort of dull, hollow, sensationless ringing that fills the space between one’s head impacting the wall and the moment it starts to hurt properly. It isn’t full dissociation, and the metal and thick straps are about as nice to press against as cold tile.

You don’t _have_ to just endure it, here. There’s enough leeway to get to the point where you’re thinking _okay, I don’t want to_ and then say something instead of shutting down and waiting for it to be over.

“A-alright, h-here you go,” Alphys says, and unbuckles you so that you can sit up.

“’S about as good a place to stop as any,” Sans puts in from his perch on one of the other machines, lifting one hand from the keyboard of his notebook laptop to scratch the back of his skull. “Chara, you wanna save?”

Chara raises one hand in assent and closes their eyes. You stretch but keep a close watch on their face while they concentrate; their fine lines seem to deepen into full wrinkles when they grimace like this, leaving their face with a time-whittled and craggy sort of cast to it.

There’s that familiar air pressure migraine-like swell of the timeline responding to Chara’s DT, and then they relax, their shoulders slumping. You stand up still barefoot and step right over the seat, bare rock cold on your toes as you cross the circle of SSS units to sit at their side. They rest their head against your temple, and you wrap your arm around their shoulders. Chara sags into you and sighs, small and soundless.

There are still three units to test, meaning that at least you’re not going to be subject to that sensation for as long once you recommence. But each one will still take a long time—it’s too dangerous to cut corners when it comes to a task as important as breaking the Barrier, and when it comes to the function of the SSS units.

That’s why it took so long to perfect the machines, in the end. Your souls have to be _nearly_ severed from your bodies, separate enough for a monster to pseudo-absorb them, but still connected enough that they can return to your bodies afterwards. And your bodies themselves must be supported and kept alive while your souls are being used. So each unit has to be able to keep your souls and their connection to your bodies stable under this extreme stress, and has to function as an intensive-care life support unit. And all of them have to be able to run and stay running at the same time and with the same power output, for as long as the operation to break the Barrier is underway.

Virtually everything that could conceivably go wrong in their development and testing has gone wrong, at some point. Sometimes fatally. You’ve only been able to reach this point because of gratuitous savescumming on Chara’s part.

“W-we’ll only have to do basic testing tomorrow,” Alphys says, pushing her glasses up on her snout. She has bags under her eyes these days—all of you do except Sans, who doesn’t have skin and blood vessels for bruises to form under his eyesockets, but he’s been extra tired and snappish anyway. “S-so I d-don’t think that we’ll have to have you come back, Chara, o-or actually d-do any intensive startup tests at all. At this point, it’s, um—I think it’s m-more important for us all to rest up b-before the main event the day after tomorrow.”

“Excellent,” Sans says. “More time to laze around.”

“Y-you d-don’t need to laze around even more than you already do, uhh, lazybones,” Alphys replies, laughing a little.

Chara sighs again and leans on you just a hair more heavily.

“Yes, Alphys is talking to you,” you tell them, a lot more conversationally than you would like to be. It’s no use actively sounding angry or worried and making them even more defensive—or worse, even more stressed out. “If we get all the hard stuff out of the way today, then tomorrow you can just nap for twenty-four hours or something.”

Chara grunts at this. “I wish. This country’s not going to run itself. Ree can take care of a lot, but not alone.”

You pat their shoulder. “Sometimes I think the two of you should go back to talk to Asgore and Toriel to review your old lessons on a little thing called _delegation._ I promise it would make your lives significantly easier if you could just employ it.”

They laugh. “Sadly, there are just a lot of tasks that _cannot_ be delegated, no matter how much we would like to.”

At least they’re managing to talk again. If they were still nonverbal right now, you would really have to worry.

The past week has worn Chara all but threadbare. They’ve complained to you about all the work, they’ve complained to you of the necessity to lie and the stress of keeping the secret a secret; they’ve even spoken low into their own knees of Frisk overhearing them talking to Asriel about preparing for the possibility of their child’s birth parents horning in to dispute custody. In short, they’ve talked to you about everything except whatever the real problem is. You don’t even know if _Asriel_ has heard what’s actually eating them.

You could wait for things to settle, because once there’s less stress to deal with Chara won’t suffer so much. But with the plan to break the Barrier so close to the wire and with Chara so burnt out anyway, you want to help if there’s a good opportunity to do that.

That perfect opportunity is not, however, right here and now in front of your boss and your little brother. You’re going to have to look for ways to collar Chara later today, or even tomorrow.

“J-just a little bit more,” Alphys says, weaving her fingers together and clenching them. “We j-just have to d-deal with the tough stuff a little bit more, and then everything will be settled. It’ll all b-be all right.”

“We can only hope,” Sans adds under his breath, and you don’t wholly disagree.

 

 

Even earphones in and your Starship Amazing playlist on blast cannot fully compensate for the irritation of your lab coat’s sleeves. Your office and all your equipment are too close to the AC room and all of its massive fans, so even when you’re not actively working on experiments that might involve splashing liquids you have to keep the coat on. Clearing out some other room so that you can move your entire rig there has always been too overwhelming, and now your time in the lab itself is limited, so you don’t see the point.

It’s the only thing you really hate about your job. The Hotland lab has been your stomping ground almost since you arrived here in the underground; rather than leave you and your brothers home alone or with babysitters, your father often brought you with him to work where he would be able to keep an eye on you himself. It was always full of strange and interesting things, brimming with new possibilities—everything you ever loved about sci-fi except real and accessible. Being an assistant and a message runner here was your first ever job, and then you signed on full-time to help with the Core, and stayed for Alphys. The lab has the best possible balance of familiarity and potential: You know it intimately, but it never gets boring.

Being able to install your own private minifridge under your desk, opposite the towers for your desktops, was really just the cherry on top of the sundae. You reflect on this just about every time you bat at the door and grab for a new bottle of soda, but it never stops being true.

Except that today, your fingers close on midair, and groping from side to side doesn’t come up with anything new. You growl a little as you turn away from your main monitor; all the programs you had open were light colors on a black background, so they leave buzzing afterimages on your retinas now that you’re looking at light green walls and blue tiles.

There is nothing left in your fridge at all except for a fruit cup and half a pudding. You hiss at the fridge and also at yourself; you ought to have gone shopping to restock it days ago, but moving the SSS machines in parts and reassembling them and all the last-minute checks have kept you so busy it’s repeatedly slipped your mind.

You write a note on the back of your hand in felt-tip pen for later—you need to finish your work now, which means you need something to drink immediately in order to take pain meds so that cramps won’t distract you, and so that you won’t later develop a roaring headache from the lack of caffeine. Papyrus would tut at you in little-brotherly self-importance, trying to get you to wean yourself of caffeine dependency, but there will be time for that after your work is done and you’ve retired.

You walk in broad steps, skirting through the lobby and into the elevator room. The only vending machine down here is the one with potato chips and other snacks in it; there used to be one for hot drinks too, but it ran into so much trouble with maintenance that eventually it was relocated somewhere else, where its job would be less demanding and it would have fewer scientists drunk on sleeplessness lightly kicking it when it spat out the wrong drink. So really there’s only one place to get a quick caffeine fix.

The elevator dings and lets you out on the ground floor. On the opposite side of the room Alphys is sitting glaring at her computer screen, clattering away at the keyboard. You stride over to her and knock on the door of her fridge to make sure that she notices you.

Alphys jumps a little, sputters, and swivels around to face you. “Oh! Prase! I-I thought that you’d gone home already. Uhh, since Sans did and everything.”

You sigh at this: Trust your brother. “No, I still have some things that I want to finish up first. And besides, you’re still at work. Even though you are my boss, I’ve been at this job even longer than you—I can hardly let you show me up.”

Alphys laughs but it sounds tired, and she pushes her glasses up in a motion that’s clearly stalling. “You know, sometimes I…” She falls silent here, hesitates for a long long moment; you lean against the fridge and you wait. Either she’ll finish the thought or she won’t. “I’ve, um. I’ve made a lot of m-mistakes getting us here. S-so sometimes I still wonder, you know, maybe if I’d just—just told Asriel no, and someone else… someone like you got to be head Royal Scientist instead…”

Here she does fall silent for good, worrying her claws.

“We wouldn’t be here,” you tell her. “At all. We wouldn’t have come this far. No one else who was interested in the job was ready to go into soul research. You remember back when you first met the lot of us, at the Dreemurrs’ place—Chara and I were ready to wait until we literally died, and give our souls up to science then. _Everything_ the underground is right now is owed to you, and that’s not an exaggeration.

“Besides, I would have been a shitty head scientist.”

Alphys laughs. “Right. S-sorry. I know this is pretty silly of me, to g-get all self-conscious at a time like this, but…”

“It’s fine. I know you can’t really help it.” You tap the fridge gently. “I’m out of soda, so I’m going to steal one from you. I’ll get you one to replace it later when I go buy myself more.”

“Ok-kay. You c-can take more if you need to, you know; I know you’ll get more to make up for it later. A-and—Prase? Go ahead home whenever you get finished with the thing you’re, uhh, doing now. D-day after tomorrow’s going to be, it’s gonna be rough p-probably.”

“Sure thing,” you say, and shift your weight so that you can open the door. Alphys has a full stock, so you lift out a full two-liter Mountain Dew and tuck it under your arm. “Don’t work yourself too hard either, all right? I’ll have to put a word in Papyrus’ ear to get him to get Undyne to haul you off to bed.”

This makes Alphys laugh again. When you close the fridge door she’s already turned back to her computer. “Thanks, Prase.”

 

 

You clock out two hours later, with a promise (read: gentle threat) to ask around to make sure that Alphys, too, manages to leave at a reasonable time.

It’s still the middle of the afternoon, significantly earlier than you usually leave work. You shed your lab coat and its stifling sleeves immediately after stepping into the baking heat of outdoor Hotland, and fold it over your arm while you pick your way down the stairs to the Riverperson’s boat.

“Back to Snowdin already?” they ask.

“You got it,” you say, and step carefully onto their boat.

“Hold on,” they tell you, so you sit down and do that, leaning back and watching the movement of the water over the edge of the boat as the Riverperson guns it.

Rufus has complained to you more than once how much he hates having to sit still through the rides, would prefer to charge headlong through Waterfall instead as long as he has the time to. You don’t feel the same. So much of your early life was made of waiting—waiting for your older brother to be finished with a toy or a video game or the computer before your parents decreed it to be Your Turn Now, waiting mindlessly in the hospital bed for a doctor or nurse or official to want something of you, waiting at the group home to be dispatched to new fosters, waiting for each new set of fosters to send you back. Waiting for the bad foster parents to stop yelling, waiting for your foster sister to get bored with your lack of response and stop touching you, waiting for your foster brothers to run out of places to punch or pinch that wouldn’t show a bruise.

Waiting for your father, for Gaster, to get bored with you and send you away, despite how long it was taking for that to happen, until ultimately it never did.

You’re used to waiting being thoroughly unpleasant for one reason or another. Biding your time comes naturally to you now, and sitting still through a boat ride watching the water ripple and eddy and form little foam-capped wavelets against the hull of the Riverperson’s vessel is even enjoyable.

“Sometimes the hardest answer to find is the most obvious,” the Riverperson says abruptly. You look up at them for a moment and then back down at the water. It’s difficult to tell when they do this whether they’re speaking to you specifically or are just talking to fill the silence; their apropos-of-nothing interjections are always very vague.

They let you off the boat when they reach the coast of Snowdin, and you wave goodbye to them before crunching down the main road, past the slime family’s house and Ice Wolf tirelessly pitching thick ice blocks into the river to flow all the way through the underground and help cool the Core.

Two of the local kids—the jester and the mouse monster in their long scarf, whose names you’ve never caught—are standing near the corner, talking.

“Come on,” the jester is saying. “I’m sure you can make it work if you try! I’ve always been telling you that there’s no need to be so gloomy about everything even when there’s nothing we can do to change it. Look on the positive side! Smile!”

The mouse sighs and turns on their stilted legs, scarf trailing into the snow. “I just can’t agree with you there. I don’t know what everyone in town is thinking anyway… suddenly getting all hopeful just because of a ‘feeling’. I’m sure it’ll turn out to be nothing. I know everyone’s just trying to keep their minds off how we’re trapped and the Royal Scientist’s experiments aren’t getting anywhere, but… I don’t see the point in faking it.”

The jester startles a little where they’re standing and turns toward you at the sound of your footsteps in the snow, but the mouse remains facing away.

You reach out and lightly pat the top of their head. “You’re right that you don’t have to force yourself to act cheerful if you don’t actually feel that way. But it’s not like there’s no hope, or as if we’re not getting anywhere.”

The mouse turns a little under your hand, fixing you with doleful eyes. “Isn’t it?”

“Have you two heard about the big experiment we’re working on in a few days?” The mouse doesn’t react, but the jester nods. “It’s an experiment on the Barrier. Depending on what the results are, we could be making some pretty significant strides towards breaking it. Whatever good news there is, you’ll be hearing about it from the Royal Family as soon as we understand the results.”

“That is heartening to hear!” the jester chirps, smile wide.

“I thought most of you humans didn’t even want to leave the underground,” says the mouse. “Why are you working so hard then?”

“Because this is about giving the monsters the choice to see what the surface is like and make choices of your own,” you tell them, and ruffle their fur one more time. “Everyone deserves to have that kind of agency over their own lives.

“Anyway—” you lift your hand and step back— “there’s only so much anyone can promise you about the future, but don’t give up on it yet.”

And you head off around the bend back to your house. Honestly it wasn’t much of a parting shot, and you probably just came off as a weird middle-aged adult trying too hard to look cool, but as long as they don’t dismiss your words entirely that’s fine.

 

 

Everyone else is already home by the time you get in.

Sans is asleep on the couch with the television on, which is fairly common for him these days, and judging by the noises from the kitchen and the smell of something sweet, Papyrus is in there cooking. And there’s light on under your father’s door, so that’s probably where he is.

You’ve been living here in Snowdin for… about thirteen years, ever since your father decided he’d done all he could tutoring Alphys and getting her projects started for her. He’d spent most of his life working on the Core and being front and center in the hustle and bustle of the capital, and wanted to settle down somewhere quieter. There so happened to be a vacancy here in Snowdin Town, and so here you came.

The adjustment was not pleasant for you, even though it had been years and years since you’d been bounced around in foster care. It helped that you still had your job at the lab. It helped that you still had your family and friends. It still was not pleasant.

Your bedroom is the attic, its ceiling slanted and its windows circular. You couldn’t quite recreate your New Home room 1:1, but you still did your best with it, and even now the layout hasn’t changed much since you moved in. The first thing you do when you climb up is deposit your coat over the back of your chair and finally peel your socks off, then grab in the closet for a new shirt.

It is good to stand, after most of your day lying in the hold of the SSS units and then sitting at your desk. Even if it’s just to stand still in the shower, under the spray almost hot enough to burn, your eyes closed and your head tilted back while droplets beat on your back. Even you get restless sometimes.

Afterwards you wipe condensation off the mirror and stand in your underwear and your bathrobe and frown at your reflection. Gray peeks through your bangs here and there on one side, just a few strands, invisible if you don’t know where to look for them. They aren’t _lines_ yet but there are contours on your cheeks where the jowl is, where your skin is used to contorting between your nose and mouth when you make faces. Chara has lines here. Chara had them already when they were your age.

You have two days and a lot to take care of before you all risk your lives to crack open the whole world. You step back from the sink and stretch, standing up on your toes with your fingertips grasping for the ceiling, all to feel the pull of it in your back and your sides.

And you pull your jeans back on, zip them tight and feed the button into the rivet. Untie the belt of your robe, shrug out of it, hang it on the door and pull your shirt on over your head, tug it so that it actually covers your stomach, adjust it here and there so that your bra isn’t sticking out too badly.

You raise your eyebrows at yourself in the mirror, open the door, and shut off the bathroom lights.

 

 

You knock on your father’s door to give him warning and then let yourself in.

Where your bedroom is as faithful a reproduction of your old one as you can get, Sans’ is constantly threatening to complete its full metamorphosis into his Official Depression Crevice, and Papyrus’ is a loud colorful hodgepodge of every major long-lasting special interest he’s ever had, your father’s room feels like he’s transplanted slices of his lab office into what’s otherwise a clean and stately bedroom.

The hardwood floor is always spotless, your father’s bed is always made with its patchwork quilt smooth and perfect as a hotel room, and there’s never a speck of dust on the bedside table. But his bookshelves are all so jam-packed they seem like they could explode in all directions like a cartoon at the slightest provocation, and his computer worktable is laden with stacks of paper and binders stuffed to bursting, its drawers almost too full to close. The whole room smells vaguely of coffee, because your father has his own coffeepot on its own table here, lined with tins of different beans and little bottles of cream. There are three used mugs lined up along its side with little rings of brown stains on the insides like layers of the earth in geology. The wastebin is mostly full of used coffee filters.

Basically, it appears that you can take the Royal Scientist out of the lab, but he will just reconstruct the parts of his office he wants to keep in his own house. You have no idea what the blueprints hung up on the wall over your dad’s desk are, and you don’t think he intends to actually build the machine drawn in them, but he keeps adding new notes and post-its every few days so that it’s so cluttered you don’t know where to look anymore.

He’s sitting at the computer drinking coffee when you come in, and he sets his mug down on the tabletop as you cross the room to sit on the edge of his bed. _Good afternoon, Prase,_ he says, and smiles. _You’re home early._

“Boss’s orders—Alphys wants us to all be rested for the big event the day after tomorrow,” you tell him, and cross your heels on the cold wood under your feet as you plant your hands behind you and lean your weight into your arms. “She’ll probably give us all a lot of time off tomorrow too as long as last-minute checks turn out okay. I get the sense that she’s turning her usual anxiety about equipment running in top shape to anxiety about the workers and participants being in top mental condition, which is probably a good call given the current situation.”

 _I’m glad to have such a capable successor,_ your father says. _It’s nice to be able to relax into the role of stay-at-home dad and only tinker with my own thought experiments without worrying about how everyone back at the lab is doing. I know that everyone is as safe as can be expected in Alphys’ hands, and in yours._

“Why am _I_ getting the credit when Alphys is doing most of the hard work? I may keep the trains running on time, but she’s the one who builds the trains in the first place.”

 _Because behind every great leader is their second-in-command, who is charged with being their administration’s professional cool head,_ your father tells you. _And, Prase, you have been as invaluable a wellspring of common sense and clear vision to the Royal Sciences as Toriel was a queen to Asgore, or Chara as Asriel’s consort. I do not know how many of our contemporaries are aware of it, but I highly doubt that the Core could have been completed with as little incident as it was without you._

“Ah,” you say, leaning back more heavily, “my much-touted EOA safety bonus,” but you’re grinning. Any authority or power you _do_ have that isn’t just your father and friends exaggerating your influence is very quiet and unassuming, and it’s nice to have your care and attention acknowledged from time to time. “Honestly it’s good to have the time off. There are a few things that I think could benefit from my attention, and if I were working forever I don’t think I would have time to do that.”

 _So you are planning to meddle in your brothers’ affairs,_ your father says. Despite his word choice you know that fond twinkle in the back of his eyesockets.

“Someone clearly has to, and everyone knows that’s an older sibling’s job,” you reply, smile gone a little grim despite yourself. “Sans would accept a Fatherly Decree™ on the surface but he’d still sulk about it, so let’s see if I can pull some strings and head him off before that’s the only possible solution.”

 _I do hope that Sans’ situation will improve when the Barrier is finally broken and new avenues open up for us all,_ your father muses. _He needs more and better treatment than we can necessarily jury-rig where we are here. But if we could get him to stop being such a helicopter brother to Papyrus beforehand that would be a very big step in the right direction._

You sigh. “Even though Sans was still pretty young through the worst of Asriel being completely terrible, I still would’ve wanted him to learn from example that this whole folding your entire life around someone else thing isn’t good or sustainable.”

 _We aren’t going to let it get anywhere near THAT degree of toxic codependency,_ your father tells you emphatically. _Even if I have to personally set up an intervention for my own son and grievously embarrass him in ways from which he will never recover for as long as he lives._

You shift to the side and lift one hand to give your father a lazy ok sign. “Well, I’m counting on you to pinch hit if my plans wind up not working.”

 _Of course,_ he says, and his smile is a little sad now, you think. _That’s the least I can do. You may all be grown now, but I am still your father, after all._

His body is a lot more worn now, the cracks in his skull deeper, but this about him still remains unchanged from when you first met him a full twenty-six years ago, from when he first offered to take you in because Asgore and Toriel understood that they could not. W. D. Gaster was never a thing like any of your fosters, not even really so much like your parents, but his temperament has always been mild and his intelligence has always been voracious.

You agreed to let him look after you because you had been told he was a scientist, and you liked science. The first thing he did upon bringing you back to his home was introduce you to Sans, who was two years old at the time, and express the hope that you could get along.

“Well,” you tell him, “whether you think of it as your natural responsibility or not, I still appreciate the backup a lot, Dad.”

 

 

When you open your father’s door to return to the living room, Papyrus is angrily chasing a small white dog around, waving both fists and shouting. The dog has a large bone in its mouth, probably pilfered from Papyrus’ bone pantry or the box in his room where he keeps his special attacks. It’s also wagging its tiny tail with such vigor it’s shaking its entire hindquarters from side to side, giving its run a weird, sort of drunken-looking fishtail.

You fondly regard this peaceful everyday scene for a while and then skirt the walls of the room and the couch so that you’re standing next to the door, with enough room to open it slightly, which you do. The dog makes a beeline towards the escape route you’ve made for it, almost gets stuck but turns its head so that the bone in its mouth is nearly vertical for a brief moment, and then is gone, almost invisible against the snow.

You close the door and face the rest of the room. Papyrus has begun to slow down, and as you watch, he slumps down with his hands on his knees, huffing and puffing with his inexplicable invisible magic skeleton lungs.

Sans, you note, is still on the couch, still snoring away.

“Drat that annoying dog!!!” Papyrus shouts, weakly stamping one foot. “Why does Sans have to feed it so much!! Now it thinks that the entire house is where it belongs and not just the garage!!! AND it keeps showing up out of nowhere while I’m trying to cook!!!!”

“Sans is probably just being Sans,” you tell him. “And it is a cute dog, even if it does like to cause trouble.”

“I suppose,” Papyrus says, “but it could still be cute and cause trouble somewhere else! Because in this house, Papyrus is the cutest!!! This is an undeniable fact and also a law of nature. That dog is undermining the authority of the Great Papyrus, Future Human-Monster Relations Ambassador! It ought to have some shame, or at least decency.”

This is a tall order for a tiny shit-starting Pomeranian, but you don’t say so because a) Papyrus is just being silly and b) he’s very right about his own cuteness.

“Hopefully the dog didn’t trip you up too badly working on dinner,” you say, gesturing towards the kitchen. At least you don’t smell anything burning. “How is that going? Do you need any help?”

“That is quite all right, for your very skilled and dashing brother has already prepared all the ingredients for vegetable stew and put them on the stove to simmer!” Papyrus says, straightening up and proudly thumping himself on the chest. “There is no need for you to worry, although the offer is very kind!”

Your brothers sure do like to nudge you and your father out of the kitchen as much as possible. You can both at least manage to make instant food without burning it, even if you do sometimes cut vegetables up unevenly, but… Well, if Sans and Papyrus like to cook that much you guess you can leave it to them.

“Dinner will be ready by eight o’clock sharp!” Papyrus goes on, chest puffed up proudly. “As usual it will be an impeccable meal, which hopefully our lazy bonehead brother will deign to wake up for.”

Here he turns to glare a little at where Sans’ foot is dangling off the couch edge. You spread your hands and shake your head.

“We may as well go somewhere else so we don’t wake him up for now,” you suggest, and Papyrus sighs and trots up the stairs. You follow him to his room and pull the door mostly closed behind you.

Papyrus’ room is also extremely neat—neater than yours and your father’s, even. He dusts his bookshelves and action figures whenever he’s too manic to sleep, which is often, and which you prefer to Alphys’ late-night pastime of going online to look for people to pick fights with in what you and Chara like to call the Bad Opinion Zone. You sit down in his desk chair now while he removes his boots and does a ridiculous physics-breaking flip to land on his back on his race car bed with one long bony foot posed in the air. You golf clap for him a little; your baby brothers can both be _such_ showoffs.

“Do you have more lessons tonight?” you ask him.

“No, I had morning duty off so that I could go take lessons in the morning! Astis has to work tonight apparently,” Papyrus replies, setting his foot back down on the mattress. “Things are very different now that Innig has officially joined us! She is incredibly good at saying things that are technically true while still leaving out information, and she is much better at uncovering tricky word traps too. Now that Astis and I no longer need to try to be suspicious when that is not the forte of either of us, I think that perhaps we have reached the best possible configuration, and may now even call ourselves a team of the dreams???”

“That is very good,” you tell him. “You’re going to do great out there.”

And it is definitely a relief that Innig finally made up her mind to take the ambassador job, even if only on a temporary basis for now. Papyrus is enthusiastic and friendly and _trusting,_ and his genuineness is definitely going to go a long way in forging bonds with any humans willing to take a chance and give monsters the time of day. Astis will be there for anyone overwhelmed by such an enthusiastic monster, or reluctant but swayable. But with just the two of them there wouldn’t be any real balance or defense against hostile politicians.

You can trust Innig to protect your brother and your friends. And since she’s made the choice to get out on the front lines herself instead of Asriel or Chara strong-arming her into the position, you don’t doubt that she’ll see her choice through to the end.

“I just _wish_ that Sans would stop being so weird about it,” Papyrus goes on. “It’s true that I enjoy my job as a Royal Guard very much, but being an ambassador seems like it will be even more fun and meaningful! And also I will be able to help Asriel and Chara! It will be challenging, yes, and I am a little bit nervous, but… this truly seems like it was meant to be my calling in life. Chara made some jokes about how Sans would have trouble dealing with it but I thought that after the initial shock, he… he would be proud of me, like you and dad are.”

“I’m sorry he’s got his head wedged so firmly up his butt,” you say with a sigh. “Sans is… the way Sans is dealing with a lot of his problems is to just deflect and stop caring about a lot of things and pretend that he’s fine with everything. One of the reasons he still lets himself care so much about our family is because he convinced himself that we’d all stay put and be safe forever, so now that you’re planning to leave the nest he’s just worried and scared and angry that he’s worried and scared. And because it hurts him less than it would to take a good look at why he feels the way he does, he’s redirecting everything into being mad at you for not behaving the way he wanted you to.

“Basically he’s only now just realized that he can’t control what you choose to do with your life, so he’s being a cranky baby about it. And he’s been thinking of you as his baby brother all this time, so it’s probably also a shock to be reminded that you’re a grown-up who makes your own choices now.”

Papyrus sighs long and draftily. “I suppose that sounds accurate, and like something Sans might think. But why must he do that!! It is very frustrating.”

“Just in general, people don’t like being reminded that there’s not much they can control,” you tell him. “Back when I lived on the surface, when I was in the foster system—there were a lot of very messed-up kids that did very messed-up things to themselves and each other, just to have something that they could be in control _of,_ instead of having to feel helpless and scared all the time.”

And that’s why it’s so frustrating to have your own brother behave this way, too, because once Asriel got his head screwed on straight at long last you were hoping you would be done with that sort of thing. But at the end of the day, you can’t control how other people deal with things either.

“I’ll try to talk to Sans later,” you promise. “He might still listen to me. Even if he doesn’t, though? Don’t worry about it, and chase your dreams without giving up. You’re working really hard for this and it’s important to you and to everyone. Sans loves you. He’ll come around eventually.”

“I do hope that you are right,” Papyrus says, and rolls over.

“I’ve known Sans since he was two years old and you from the day you were born, little bro,” you remind him. “As the older sibling, it is my job to be right. Plus Dad has promised to put his foot down if this goes on for too much longer, so even if I can’t do anything? _Rip Sans anyway.”_

This gets a tiny _nyeh_ of a snicker out of Papyrus. The sound warms you up inside.

 

 

Sans is _still,_ when you reach the ground floor, snoring atop the couch. You give him a dubious look and consider some whether you would rather he trade lashing out as a maladaptive coping mechanism for catatonia.

You’re distracted from such pointless musings by a small yap from the direction of the kitchen: That dog is back in the house again, and disappearing around the kitchen corner.

“Didn’t I _just_ let you outside?” you say aloud to it. As if in answer, it yaps again, echoing off the kitchen walls and linoleum.

Well, you don’t want it to get up on the range somehow and get hurt or knock over Papyrus’ stewpot, so you follow it into the kitchen. But weirdly, when you get into the room, it’s nowhere to be seen.

You check the trash can. Nope.

You check the narrow corridor made between the fridge and the wall. Still nope.

The cupboard door underneath the sink is slightly ajar. You narrow your eyes at it and open it all the way.

…There appears to be some sort of secret passageway in the back wall of your house??? Admittedly you haven’t looked in this cupboard since the end of July, but there definitely was not a secret passage here then.

You hesitate just long enough to consider your life and your choices before bowing your head and stepping through to see what’s on the other side.

It’s just a square room with a stone floor and walls, like any self-respecting section of the Waterfall caves, but it’s also got junk everywhere. The back wall is made up in a papier-mâché mockup of a Shinto shrine, complete with shiny collection box. There’s a string of colorful fairy lights that you’re pretty sure ought to be hanging on the Gyftrot tree in the middle of the plaza right now. There’s also a bunch of weird miscellaneous objects, like some framed photos of Papyrus (????!!?), a couple neatly tied pieces of rope lying on the ground, an old-fashioned boom box, and one of those wiggly blow-up mascots they put in front of car dealers when they’re having a sale.

You take your phone out of your pocket and snap a couple pictures just for posterity’s sake, and because this situation is just _so_ wild that you sort of need to have photographic proof that this weird little shrine is actually real and you’re not just tripping. It’s been _literally_ over two decades since you’ve had to deal with any sort of psychosis at all, but this is just so surreal.

The dog is here because of course it is. It’s sitting in front of the donation box, tail wagging, wiggling proudly, smiling its dopey dog smile.

“You’ve sure been busy,” you tell it, and it yaps back cheerfully.

There aren’t any other entrances or exits to this room that you can see. It’s still a complete and total mystery as to how this silly dog even managed to get back into the house after you closed the door on it.

You are not sure if science can answer the questions posed here. You’re not sure if you even want to try applying science to this problem. Sometimes the underground is just weird.

You pick the dog up and hold it securely under one arm. It lets you, not even squirming, just hanging relaxed against your hip with its butt still wagging. You duck back out of the shrine room and close the cupboard door behind you.

Since you’ve got your phone at the ready anyway, you text Chara the photos: _lmao check this out_

 _Prase, what and why and also how the fuck,_ Chara responds about half a minute later.

_ok ykno that one dog that rly likes to bother m bro_

_Ah. Suddenly I understand everything._

“You appear to have a reputation,” you inform the dog, which just yaps. To Chara you continue, _r u doin anything important atm_

 _That depends, I think, on your definition of important,_ they reply.

_will any1 die if u leave/do asriel or frisk or some1 have u doing smth rn/will any1 but u give ½ a shit if u ditch_

_No, no, and what about the shits that *I* will give if I just stand up and leave, Prase._

_i donut care abt them_

There’s a short pause in which you’re pretty sure Chara is rolling their eyes and sighing on the other end. _Okay, what do you want?_

_meet me @ the rvrpsns dock in hotland asap were goin 2 play hooky_

_Prase,_ Chara types, just that and nothing else.

_ill be there in like 40 min or less so finish w/e ur doin while u have the chance_

_Okay, if you insist,_ Chara replies, and you put your phone back in your pocket.

“You and I are going on an adventure,” you inform the dog. If it’s at all put off by this turn of events, it does not show it.

 

 

You take the time to put shoes on and yell to your family that you’re heading out for a bit and to call or text if they need anything, and still with the troublesome dog cinched firmly under your arm, you head straight for the Riverperson’s ferry and ask them to take you to Hotland.

The dog is disquietingly well-behaved during the trip: It just sits on your lap with its face on its front paws, occasionally wagging its tail, not even barking. You do not entirely trust it to not be planning some sort of mischief, because your experience with it in the past has been roughly one (1) new shenanigan per second, but even if it is up to no good there’s not much you can do to discourage it, so you just hold it still with one hand on its back and don’t say anything.

Despite their seeming lack of enthusiasm over text, Chara is there on the steps, as promised, nodding a little. They do straighten up and then stand up without you having to call them, which you hope is a good sign; they walk right up to you and stop, planting their hands on their hips.

“All right, what do you need?”

“Get in, loser,” you say, gesturing; “we’re taking a break.”

“Nice Mean Girls reference,” Chara says, but they do get on the boat and sit.

“Well, someone has to trade outdated aughts and 2010s memes with you, so it may as well be me. Would you take us to Waterfall?” you ask the Riverperson, who responds in the affirmative and sends the boat running in the other direction. This is another one of those things about the underground that makes no sense and can really only be explained by magic, and which therefore you have given up asking about.

“The thing about being married to the king, you know, is that you’re not supposed to take breaks until you’re dead,” Chara quips, voice bland, but they lean on you all the same.

“Bull _shit_ you’re not,” you tell them. The dog squirms on your lap and you lift your hands a little, watching it warily; all it does is turn around and lie back down, stretching out its fluffy neck so that it can sniff Chara’s fingers and lick at them. “Resting is important for everyone. You can’t help anyone if you burn out, so that means delegating and stopping to take care of yourself when you’re not doing great.”

Chara starts to pet the dog, scritching its cheek listlessly. “I’m aware of all that, thanks.”

You consider them. They seem card-house insubstantial leaned against you, made up of tinder and matchsticks. “Are you sick right now?”

“I am not,” they say. “Only a little exhausted.”

They at least don’t have a fever. You glance sidelong at the Riverperson, who is still humming and concentrating on steering. In a slightly lower tone you ask, “Are you _pregnant??”_

Chara starts to giggle and then to laugh, leaning harder into your shoulder. _“No,_ seeing as the only person I’ve ever had sex with is a giant lion goat wolf man, with whom I am most likely reproductively incompatible based on the fact that the underground literally has no human-friendly contraception available and yet he has not managed to knock me up yet. What the _fuck,_ Prase.”

“Well, you’re acting like you’ve aged ten years over the past week or so and you’ve lost like ten, twenty pounds. I just want to know if there’s any cause aside from stress, because that’s really worrying.”

“Wouldn’t I be _gaining_ weight if I were pregnant.”

“I think that depends on _how_ pregnant? From what I am aware fetuses stay pretty small for a good while. Anyway, _is_ there anything going on aside from stress?”

“It’s just the stress. That tickles,” they say, probably to the dog, which is still licking their fingers. “There’s not much we can do about the situation itself to make it less stressful, so I just have to bear with it until things let up.”

“If you push yourself until you collapse, or if it starts looking any more like you’re about to collapse than it already does, I solemnly promise that I will join forces with Asriel to make you stay in bed for at least twenty-four hours.”

“Don’t,” Chara says, and sighs. “If Frisk starts thinking I’m really that fragile they’ll be even _more_ upset.”

“I don’t know about that,” you tell them. “Frisk’s not stupid. If they can tell that you tend to push yourself too hard, they’ll always be worrying that you’re hiding your mental or physical health problems from them. But if they see you acknowledge your own limits and take good care of yourself, then they can relax and trust you. It’d also be modeling that behavior for them so they have a good example to follow in the future.”

Chara looks up to frown at you. “That is a lot of common sense that I never asked for.”

“Moirail privileges,” you say, gently shoving them with your shoulder. “Deal with it.”

 

 

You knock lightly on Napstablook’s door and wait for them to open it.

“Can we borrow your floor?” you ask, indicating Chara with your free hand. “I’m making them lie down.”

“Oh…… sure,” Napstablook says, watery gaze turning from you to Chara and back again. “I’ll just be working… with headphones on…… I won’t be a very entertaining host……… but if you’re okay with that. You can use the sound system if you want……… these headphones are really good…………”

“Excellent, thanks,” you tell them, and they float back off to their computer, giving you and Chara room to come in.

Napstablook keeps cushions around nowadays because their floor is so high-traffic; Liron at least is in here a _lot,_ as are Mettaton and Shyren, and you still drag Chara over to meditate and unwind from time to time. So Chara makes themself a small sofa cushion mountain so they can lie at an incline, and you get one that you can use as a pillow, and you hand the dog off to Chara to hold while you attach your phone to one of Napstablook’s stereos and queue up a hodgepodge of chiptune and electronica.

The dog continues to sit with a docility that you’re deeply suspicious of on Chara’s stomach, rising into the air and then sinking as Chara takes deep breaths.

“Who is this, Snail’s House?” Chara asks absently as you lie down next to them.

“It’s et aliae, I can send it to you later if you want. I may not be looking forward to the huge rush to the surface when we finally do break the Barrier, but it’ll be good to catch up to all my favorite musicians, see what they’ve been doing in the past two and a half decades. I bet Shawn Wasabi’s made some really nice shit since I jumped down a hole.”

“Mmm,” says Chara.

“Plus you’ll finally get to find out how Homestuck ended, and play Hiveswap.”

“God,” Chara says. “It’s been thirty _fucking_ years.”

“Please appreciate how steadfastly I did not spoil you for literally twenty-six of those years,” you tell them, grinning. “It would have been too cruel to rob you the joy of watching End of Act 6 and Act 7 unspoiled in real time.”

“Literally what color is your soul again,” Chara says absently. “I refuse to believe that this feat of patience that in any other person would be superhuman was really that much of a hardship for you.”

“As if you’re capable of running at full throttle determination every second of every day,” you retort. “Please believe me when I tell you that sometimes I was very tempted to just tell you stuff, and could only hold back by imagining how much better the look on your face would be if I was watching your blind reactions.”

“Should I be worried about that?”

“I think I’m going to leave that up to your imagination,” is all you say. The look on their face when they understand that Homestuck The Anime was actually realized by Andrew Hussie in real life… it will be worth all the patience in the world.

Also, they will probably cry when they watch the end credits and realize that Rose Lalonde, their first preteen crush, was secretly canonically Jewish all along. There is no possible way that you could ever spoil _that_ surprise for them.

Next to you Chara sighs. The white dog wiggles out from under their hands, crawls up to sit on their chest, and licks their chin.

“Stop that,” they say like they don’t really mean it. The dog whuffs at them, tiny and high-pitched.

“You have a friend,” you observe. It’s actually sort of cute? You weren’t aware that that dog had any hobbies outside of pranking Papyrus and winding up in incredibly bizarre situations in such a way that nobody can even begin to fathom how it got there. That one time Mettaton found it hanging out in the cabinets of the _Cooking With A Killer Robot_ set was in particular priceless.

Chara looks at the dog, eyebrows upraised. The dog looks back.

“Whenever I need to sit up you’re going to have to move,” they inform it. It yaps in response and wags its tail, and Chara rests back against their cushions as if satisfied with this.

“Aww,” you say.

Chara favors you with a baleful eye. “Do you want me to relax or do you want to keep harassing me there in the peanut gallery?”

You just grin at them until they sigh and close their eyes and go back to petting the dog.

You wait for about five minutes, and then say, “Speaking of Homestuck… I sure hope The Baby Is You is still up somewhere on the depths of the internet when we get out of here.”

Chara makes an extremely inelegant squeak-snort of muffled laughter. _“God_ so do I. That was just. The pinnacle of a lot of things, most of them unspeakably inane. Also, it was a beautiful opera. And no, I will _not_ embiggen my words less so you can understand me.”

“Ah,” you say, unable to keep the laughter out of your own voice. “It seems that you’ve decided to be the tyrant of books instead of the queen.”

“Of course I have. ‘Tyrant’ is a gender-neutral title.”

They extend a hand to you, which you make a deliberately poor attempt at low-fiving. You’re very glad that Napstablook has their headphones on, because this conversation is incredibly stupid and not particularly quiet.

It’s worth it, though; it feels as though you haven’t seen Chara laugh like this in a very long time.

The dog, which is still lying on Chara’s chest like a little furry loaf with its back feet splayed out, turns its head to you briefly. You could swear that for a second it almost seems to wink at you.

 

 

Chara falls asleep eventually and you let them stay that way until Papyrus texts you that dinner is almost ready and you need to come home soon to be on time for it. Even so, you hate to wake them. Chara almost definitely hasn’t been sleeping enough, and they need as much rest as they can get so that they can deal with the stress they’re going through healthily.

They insist that you take the Riverperson’s boat so that you can make sure you’re home on time, and they text Asriel to come pick them up while you watch. You leave them at Napstablook’s with the little white dog still asleep in their lap.

On the ride back home you text Alphys to make sure she’s gone home by now, and she replies with a selfie of her and Undyne and a large bowl of popcorn in between them, apparently in the middle of watching some new show.

You step back inside to find Papyrus dragging the table into place and your father rousing Sans from where he is _still_ lying asleep on the sofa. You go fetch the chairs. The proper dinner table doesn’t get much use anymore since you and Sans spend so much time at the lab even late into the night. Most days you think Papyrus and your father eat on the couch together, or Papyrus eats out with friends and your father eats instant food in front of his computer.

One likely development is that your experiments ending will at least mean more family time. Maybe that will go a long way towards patching up things before they have a chance to become so strained.

 

 

You follow Sans upstairs and gently put a hand on his bedroom door to keep him from closing it in your face. He gives you this _Look_ that’s probably supposed to deter nonsense out of you, but you just raise your eyebrows and say “I promise this isn’t going to take that long” and he rolls his eyes and deflates and lets you into his bedroom.

“You’re just here to give me crap about Papyrus,” he says, sitting heavily on his unmade bed and slouching backwards. You stay standing because there isn’t anywhere else to sit except the floor, which is littered with stray papers, worn clothes that Sans has not bothered to put in the hamper, and other stray objects that don’t belong on the floor. “So just get it over with and leave, willya? I could be goin’ back to sleep right now.”

He can’t avoid the problem, so naturally he’s just trying to rush you through it. Well, you guess that if you were in his shoes you’d be acting pretty allergic to emotional unpleasantness too, but that still doesn’t mean that you like it.

“I don’t think being angry about it is going to dissuade Papyrus from going ahead with the ambassador job,” you say instead, leaning against the dresser because it’s better than nothing. “He’ll just dig his heels in harder, because he’s having fun and cares about helping out this way. But you know that as well as I do, since we’ve both been watching over him all his life.”

Sans grunts, and you sigh.

“In the car crash that killed my human family, my older brother saved me from getting skewered by debris,” you say. “It was a split second reflex, as far as I can put things together from the other side of it. He bled to death lying on top of me. I literally felt his heart stop beating. And it was another hour before rescue crews were able to take the car apart and get me out. I was pinned under his corpse all that time.”

“That’s cheerful,” Sans says.

“I remember the sensations and the sounds and the smells pretty clearly even now, but I can’t remember what my brother’s last words to me were while he was dying, or what my parents were talking about before the crash. I lost everything that mattered to me all at once, and then I spent the next couple years being cycled between dramatically different environments beyond my ability to cope. Then after Dad took me in I spent several months being _utterly convinced_ that he was going to just pass me off to someone else any day now. I had nightmares about it that I 100% could not distinguish from reality at the time, and until we started basic therapy together I was frothingly paranoid.

“I joined Dad as a lab assistant because I knew how dangerous the Core construction was and I was scared. I wanted to be in a place where I could keep an eye on things myself. Even after Dad quit and I worked with Alphys, when you said that you wanted to join as an assistant too I was against it. DT research isn’t as dangerous as the Core was, but I didn’t want to expose you to any risk.”

“You sure you’re not making that last part up as some kinda _I-dealt-with-it-so-you-can-too?”_ Sans asks. “’Cause if you’re serious, you didn’t breathe a bit of that to me.”

“I am serious,” you say. “There were three things that kept me from throwing a fit about your life choices: One, they were _your_ choices, for you to make. Two: I literally spent seven years watching my best friend’s boyfriend trying to cram them into a padded box to keep them perfectly safe from every little thing and controlled so that they’d always be his, and there’s nothing like that experience to make you look real hard at your own overprotective urges. Three: I talked to Dad and to Chara about the fact that I was scared, and I figured out ways to deal with it on my own that wouldn’t crimp your lifestyle, like checking in on you from time to time to make sure you were doing all right.”

“Hrm,” says Sans.

“There’s a thing in the psychology books Chara’s been borrowing from Liron to see if they can help Frisk,” you say, “about how there’s no emotion that’s innately bad or that you’re not allowed to feel. It’s just that we choose how to act on those emotions.”

“Your, uh, point being?”

“I agree with you, actually. Papyrus going into human politics is scary. It’s less scary with Innig there to look after him and Astis—and knowing logically that Chara and Asriel are going to do everything in their power to keep the ambassadors safe—but it’s still scary. I’m worried about him getting exposed to the uglier side of humanity, and getting hurt physically or emotionally. But I think there are better ways to deal with it than getting angry at everyone because anger’s easier to deal with than fear.”

Sans huffs out a sigh and pushes himself up, staring at you with his head down.

“Prase,” he says, “you remember when our old man first brought Pap home from the lab, right? This teeny-tiny little fresh loaf of baby bones, _hand_ made by Dad. I was still just a kid, and it was—the first time I understood what a baby really _is,_ that total lack of knowledge about anything. Total helplessness.”

“I remember. You were so dumbstruck by that baby. You loved him from the second you set eyes on him. I did too—I’d just had a little practice from when _we_ first met, and you were a foot and a half tall and loved everybody because you didn’t know any better yet. You know what I thought back then?”

“What’d you think back then?” Sans asks, propping his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.

“That for the first time I actually understood what it is about a little sibling that’d make an older one decide to die for them,” you say.

Sans lies back down. “Look—I ain’t got it to a point where I can look at it that calmly. I don’t—I don’t want to just give up on expecting Pap to come home safe, to trust that he’s still gonna be here tomorrow and the day after. And it feels like that’s my only option if I actually wanna be okay with what he’s doing. It’s fucked up and I do not like it.”

“Then you can talk it out with me, or with Dad, or with Alphys or somebody,” you tell him. “You don’t have to suddenly be okay with everything immediately just because you accept that Papyrus has made his choice and you can’t change it. There are just better ways to deal with it. At least consider it, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” says Sans, rolling over. “Cool pep talk.”

“You’re welcome. Do you want me to get the lights on my way out or do you still need ‘em for something?”

“Yeah, shut ‘em off, thanks.”

You turn and head for the door, flipping the lightswitch as you go. Just as you close the door, you hear your brother add, “And I’ll think about it, I guess” from behind you.

You can’t quite manage to pull your expression into a smile after how much that conversation took out of you, but you can feel your shoulders relax at least. Typical Sans, to be so dramatic about that admission.

 

 

There are boxes on the floor of your room, which you actively ignore in favor of lying down on top of your covers and stretching out.

The probability for success in breaking the Barrier, at least, is very high, especially if there’s no ill effects on you and the other humans that would cause some sort of delay in the experiment. You and Alphys and Sans and all the other lab workers have put _years_ of research and experimentation into this.

So, even though technically speaking it’s impossible for any of you to move out and into lives on the surface _immediately,_ because there will be politics and practicalities to worry about, you are supposed to be doing some light packing.

You do not want to do any sort of packing, even light. It’s taken _so long_ for you to really get comfortable here in Snowdin Town and set down roots and trust in the fact that this is your home and it’s _yours._ Thinking about how much longer that process will take in any new place is just going to give you an ulcer.

And since the need isn’t urgent, you have the leeway to just… put it off. Procrastination isn’t the world’s healthiest coping mechanism either, but by god, you are going to employ the hell out of it in situations like this one.

 _There’s nothing to gain from getting your nose all out of joint over things that are already super over, Chrys,_ you remember your brother saying, more clearly than you’ve been able to summon his voice from the pits of your memory in years now. And it’s good to be able to remember him clearly, even if you’re going to pay for that trying to get to sleep tonight.

You would sooner throw yourself dramatically down another hole than let anyone else call you by the stupid nicknames your brother liked to use for you, but you miss the nicknames themselves. The only reason you haven’t gotten one of your worry stones off the desk is because it would hurt even more to have a reminder in your own hands of all his silly gemstone jokes.

It’s been a long time, though.

So the pain will be gone by morning, if you can just wait it out.

“I really can’t look down my nose at Chara for all their self-destructive problem solving,” you say out loud, and you close your eyes.

You let the old pain and the anxiety well up without trying to push it away, take a deep breath, hold it, count—and exhale. The waves in your heart die down.

There will be time to think about what comes next after the Barrier is broken.

It will be all right to focus on more immediate concerns until then.


	8. and we fought for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bonus warnings for this chapter include: violent dream imagery, body image issues, blink-and-you'll-miss-it deadnaming.
> 
> also, with regards to frisk's medical issues mentioned in this chapter, they have 11β-hydroxylase CAH (which is also their intersex variation) and take glucocorticoid replacements because of the related stress hormone overproduction problems.

You wake for the third time with the blankets wedged under your legs, Frisk’s cheek on your shoulder, Asriel’s chin pressed against the top of your head, and his arm heavy over you and your child.

Different sensations war in your body: Your heart is thumping anxiously against your ribs, demanding that you change positions, but at the same time you’re comfortable pushed up close to your husband and your baby and you don’t _want_ to move. Plus your entire body feels wooden, and your eyes are gritty; this marks the seventh day in a row of being unable to get eight straight, and you just want to eat a sleep aid and knock yourself back out. The frequent awakenings make nights feel more like catnaps, completely unrefreshing; even catching extra naps here and there hasn’t helped you feel rested at all.

You’re too _old_ to be able to stand this hypervigilance bullshit anymore. This was easy to bounce back from when you were ten and still acclimating to the Dreemurr household, but time has beaten and whittled you down to toothpicks, and your heart physically aches against the constant stress. Under any other circumstances you’d be going down to Toriel’s to see if adjusting your meds would help at all, but—it’s just one more day plus change. There isn’t really a point.

Turning your head and squinting at the clock on the bedside dresser tells you that at least it’s actually morning now, instead of fucking 3 AM again. You don’t even want to try to calculate how much sleep you’ve actually managed to get since then—you definitely slept some and it’s definitely 7:45 now and that will have to be good enough.

You try to roll onto your back without actually undoing the Frisk sandwich you woke up bookending. If you actually got up it would definitely wake them, and probably Asriel too, and—you don’t think they’ve been getting much more sleep than you, lately. Sometimes when you wake up at night they’re awake too, sweating and staring up at the ceiling, and they hold your hand quietly until you both manage to drift back off.

Their nightmares are the cousin of yours, and you’re going to hate yourself forever for kicking them off. Every other day they come crawling back to your and Asriel’s bed, shivering, and the two of you hold them because there’s little else you _can_ do.

Frisk doesn’t stir as you awkwardly reposition yourself, but Asriel grunts a little and grips at your hip.

“’S it time to get up already,” he mumbles.

“Technically not for another ten minutes or so,” you answer him. “Go back to sleep.”

He grunts again. “If it’s only another ten minutes I might ‘s well get up and get breakfast ready.” And up he rises, huge and yawning so wide as to show off all his pointy teeth, fur sticking out in odd directions. He steps over you and Frisk and onto the floor effortlessly, leans down to kiss you on the mouth and Frisk on their cheek, and then straightens back up and leaves, claws clicking softly on the wood.

Pressed up against you, Frisk makes a quiet sound of almost-complaint, and you hate yourself a little more.

“I know,” you say. “But let’s go get medicine and get dressed and eat breakfast, so we can be in time for morning practice.”

This time the noise Frisk makes is distinctly complaint, but they unattach from your side anyway and wriggle up into a sitting position from beneath the covers.

Getting up and pulling your knee and ankle braces on, your bones feel like overripe ice, ready to snap like a shot beneath an errant foot. Over your heart, your chest feels prickly with pain, tense. You get out sweatpants to pull on over your boxers, and tug the stiff new bicep supporter into place on your arm. Stuff your gloves into a pocket. Replace your wrist braces. Sigh a little. Tie your hair back and step out into the hall.

Asriel has brought fresh flowers from the garden to adorn the table—nemophila, you think, a little cluster of sky-colored petals. You can hear him banging around in the kitchen; judging from the smell he’s making something with eggs for breakfast. Frisk is aimlessly wandering the living room, stopping in places to stare aimlessly at furniture or mantelpiece ornaments.

“We still have five minutes or so until it’s meds time,” you call to them, “so let’s log your blood pressure for your grandma, now.”

Frisk rolls their eyes a little and sticks their tongue out for a moment, but they come to sit at the table with you as you bring out the arm cuff and the notepad.

The medicine that Toriel uses to help mitigate your child’s hypertension is a steroid—is actually the same drug that was in your emergency inhaler when you were a kid with poisoning-induced breathing problems—and because it’s such a powerful drug, she has you and Asriel keep a careful eye on how Frisk is responding to it so that she can fine-tune the dose every few weeks. A lot of the technical pharmaceutical explanation went over your head if you’re going to be honest, but Asriel seems to understand it, and from a lifetime of being on pain medication and antidepressants that Toriel made, you trust her to know what she’s doing. Morning and evening checks of Frisk’s blood pressure are well-worn routine.

For now it seems to be within normal range, so you scribble it down and shut off the machine and undo the cuff velcro. Frisk’s pill and a half and your stack of medications are both lying on the table with helpful glasses of water there, likely set out by Asriel; you heft your glass and smile grimly.

“Bottoms up, kid,” you say. Frisk picks up their water glass and clinks it against yours. You watch them take their medication before you get started on your own.

“Breakfast is omelets and tea, so you guys can have some protein before you go exercise so you can stay all buff and badass,” Asriel calls, and you swallow the last of your pills and drain the remainder of your water.

“Breakfast and reminding all my friends that I am the biggest and most cool badass in the entire underground, my favorite times of day,” you say, and beside you Frisk giggles a little, and you smile.

 

 

It’s raining outside because fuck you, apparently; the cold and the damp seem intent on slipping knives in between the bones of your wrists and knees, and your sinuses throb, threatening congestion or sneezes. Your eyes ache even worse than when you woke up, feeling grittier in the chilly October drafts through the ceiling than ever. Morning you showed an unusual amount of foresight in throwing on a t-shirt before heading to the garden instead of just going in your sports bra the way you usually do.

You go through your warm-up stretches with Frisk while Undyne, Innig, and Rufus gossip about Royal Guard stuff. The flowers and the tile floor are all faintly damp with dew and rain: It seeps uncomfortably through the legs of your pants, and you sincerely hope that it’s just your imagination that the protests of your joints are so loud today.

But you stand up all the same and call up your trident, turning slow while you do it so that the shining red haft twirls around you in a lovely spiral. Your weapon is warm in your hands as you take hold of it, comforting against your bare fingers.

Frisk, next to you, smiles and holds up their favorite stick. You shift your grip on your trident so that you can reach out and pat their head, making them laugh.

Practicing forms with them, you always start slow, standing side by side like old calisthenics DVDs in human gym class from a million years ago. You make sure your movements are large and exaggerated enough for them to follow along, and speed up slowly so that they’ll be able to keep up without hurting themself or getting anxious.

Further down the throne room Undyne is fending off both Innig and Rufus at once, braying with laughter: “You guys are about a billion years too early to beat ME!!! That’s why I’M the boss and YOU’RE my loyal minions!!!!”

You straighten up out of your bend and rest the pole of your trident on your shoulder to watch her send Rufus rolling head over heels into Innig. He sits up, spits out grass, and sticks his tongue out.

“Tch,” says Undyne, grinning too hugely to come off as any real kind of dismissive. “It’s been too long since anybody’s been able to give me a REAL FIGHT. I bet I could whup the whole Royal Guard all by my onesie! H—heck, I bet I could _bench press_ the whole Royal Guard!”

“Individually, sure,” says Innig from the ground, “but I have my doubts about you being able to bench press all of us at once.”

“I bet you I could do the Hotland guard and the Snowdin guard separately, at least,” Undyne boasts. “And when I do, you all should take pics so I can show off for Alphys.”

 _“If,”_ Rufus says. “And that’s a pretty big ‘if’, even for you.”

“You only get to shoot down my bragging once you get back up and give me a REAL fight!! C’mon! I’ll suplex you and Innig both at the same time!!!”

“Don’t bully your loyal peons so much,” you interject, making sure to keep your tone of voice loving instead of reproachful. “If you need somebody to roughhouse with EVERY minute of morning practice, I’ll play with you until Rufus and Innig catch their breath.”

Undyne’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really??? We haven’t gone at it in a while—you sure?”

You snort. “Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle.”

Rufus and Innig vacate the big patch of grass and flowers while Undyne bounces in place excitedly, and you pat Frisk’s shoulder to encourage them to stay to the side too. It _has_ been a while since you sparred all out, but—maybe that’s what you need. You miss really moving your body and having fun with your friends.

“How we gonna do this?” Undyne asks, grin wide and eager. “First hit?”

“Sure,” you reply, stretching up on your toes, arching your spine in. “Since it _has_ been a while and I don’t want to overdo it either.”

“Sounds good by me! But in return, you better not hold back!!!”

And without any further warning, she holds up her hand, encircling your soul in her green magic to limit your movement.

This was about what you were expecting, so you’re calm as you raise your trident up. Undyne’s status effect magic is strong, but it will wear off quickly, and that’s when you can go get her. She doesn’t waste your time with slow warm-up bullets—she launches a quick volley at you from all different directions, and you dance in place to bat them all away.

“Nice to see you haven’t lost your touch!” she calls, rolling her shoulders and stretching out her hands as she calls up more bullets: This time it’s the golden ones that twist and rotate in midair.

“Asriel can be surprisingly helpless for someone who specializes in such flashy magic,” you banter back, lightly bending your knees and shifting your weight so that you’ll be able to turn more nimbly. “And I have Frisk to consider now, too. I’ve had to stay strong to take care of them both.”

“Now that’s some PASSION!” Undyne crows, and lets the bullets fly.

You really have missed this. Practicing forms keeps you limber and maintains your muscles, but it really is nothing at all like sparring. Your whole body feels light, feels warm, and that’s enough for you to disregard the vague stinging in your knees and the needle-like prickling up and down your ribs.

The moment Undyne’s hold on your soul breaks, you take off running towards her, dodging sideways to avoid her thrown spear. She stops you again after only a few steps, too far out of range for you to get her with your trident, and you spend the next few minutes twirling your weapon to deflect her attacks once more.

She jumps back as soon as her spell breaks for the second time. The air fills with the smell of ozone, and you narrow your eyes and launch yourself forward.

You catch yourself automatically with your trident, choking, before you even feel the crackling numbness in your shoulder and the right side of your ribs. Your vision blurs wildly and sways, going green and then blue and then hazy gray; your ears ring suddenly and there’s a great sound of rushing in your ears—and then your right lung finally starts to obey you again, delivering air to your body even as your heart begins to burn.

“Chara?!” Undyne is yelling, seemingly from far away, but the next moment her clammy hands grip your shoulders firmly. “Holy shit, I’m sorry! I thought you were gonna dodge that!”

“I messed up,” you manage to get out. “I mistimed it.”

“It looked like your hip gave for just a moment,” you hear Innig say. Excellent; the entire peanut gallery is here to commentate on your slip-up. “That’s why your takeoff was so shaky.”

“It’s, uh,” Rufus says, and then pauses, and then he rushes on anyway because that’s what he always does: “It’s really unlike you to mess up so bad you take three full-power bullets right to the back, Chara. I think you should maybe make sure you’re still in shape before you jump in the deep end straight off, next time.”

“Yes, thank you for the editorial,” you tell him. The whole right side of your upper body is still tingling, mostly numb, and your overtaxed heart is crying out at you, its beat burbling and uneven. Without your trident for support and Undyne helping to hold you up, you doubt you’d be able to stay upright. “I’ll be alright if I can rest for a while.”

“Yeah??? I hope so,” Undyne says, squeezing your shoulders. “I shoulda been more careful instead of getting all excited. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” you tell her, squeezing your eyes shut and concentrating on breathing evenly. “I got excited too. This isn’t the first time in my life I’ve gotten cocky and eaten a bullet straight on; I really _will_ be all right as long as I can sit down for a while and rest.”

Small hands find your right arm, and you open your eyes and turn to see Frisk standing at your side. They’re very wide-eyed and their face is very pale. The tingles spread as your numbness recedes, and as adrenaline starts to wear off you remember that it’s very cold and wet this morning.

“I want to go home,” Frisk says aloud, small and quiet.

“That sounds like a good idea,” Innig puts in. “You don’t want to push it since tomorrow’s the big day.”

God, it rankles _so much_ being ordered around by the three who were literal actual children when you all started training together, but Innig is right. If you want to hold up until tomorrow you will have to cut down on the theatrics.

You banish your trident and straighten up with an effort. “I’m only humoring you because you clearly all care for me so very much, mind,” you say blandly. Frisk hugs you around the middle, their forehead pressing against your old shoulder wound a little painfully.

“Yeah, we know,” Rufus quips. “As long as you’re being responsible we don’t care what your excuse is.”

You lovingly give him the finger as Frisk half hauls you out of the throne room. Rufus sticks his tongue out at you as you go, and it almost feels normal.

 

 

Asriel glances to the side when he hears your and Frisk’s footsteps, then his whole head turns and he sets his files down on the tabletop with a slap. _“Chara??_ What happened?”

Frisk, who’s insistent on halfway holding you up, drags you straight to your husband instead of allowing you to sit down in the old reading chair. “I got careless during practice. That’s all. Just need to rest.”

“You look awful!” Asriel makes as if to stand, his nails scratching on the floor like he’s bracing himself on it, then seems to think better of it and relaxes into his chair, reaching up to touch your face instead. “Your face is practically _blue._ And you’re so sweaty.”

 _They were fighting Undyne and she hit them,_ Frisk tells their father.

“You got hit by _Undyne?”_ Asriel repeats, boggling. “And it hurt you _this_ much? She hasn’t been able to so much as _touch_ you in practice for years!”

“I got careless,” you tell him again. Can’t he just leave it at that? “It did hit me harder than I expected, so I just need to rest for a while.”

“I’ll say.” Asriel keeps looking at you and wincing, tawny brown eyes wet with concern. “I know it’s harder for humans to tell, but if you could see your stats right now… it’s kinda like in Pokémon games when their health goes all the way down to red and the alarm is going off.”

You make a face. “It doesn’t exactly feel _good,_ mind you, but that has to be an exaggeration.”

“It’s not,” Asriel says. “I bet you couldn’t even stand up if Frisk weren’t helping you right now. Do you want me to carry you back to bed?”

This is a bit of a strange use of _‘do you want’_ because you don’t really want him worrying about you or realizing just how bad you actually feel right now, but you genuinely doubt that you could make the distance without support. “I guess so, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Frisk slips out from under your arm, and Asriel scoops you up in both of his, lifting you carefully. If you closed your eyes you might pass out, so you keep them open as he walks in that gentle even tread through the foyer and down the hall to your bedroom.

“Would it be easier on you to lay flat or sit up a little?” Asriel asks.

“An incline would probably work best,” you tell him, “and with my feet up.”

Asriel sits you on the mattress and supports you in the crook of his arm as he arranges the pillows, and then unties your sneakers for you so that you can kick them off. He helps lay you back and pulls the covers up over you, smoothing them over you with his big hands. He even gets out the extra blankets and settles them gently over top of you, a comforting extra warmth and pressure.

You reach up to undo the rubber band keeping your hair up, and fumblingly roll it down over your wrist instead. Asriel adjusts your bangs with feathery gentle touches of his claws, and you sigh and relax into the mattress. It’s so comfortable. You never want to get up again.

“Will you be able to handle the morning schedule without me?” you ask. Prase _was_ on your case to rest and model healthy choices for Frisk, and maybe this way you can catch up on a little bit of that lost sleep. “I think I’d do better to rest for a while. I’ll join you again after lunch, if that’s all right.”

“Yeah, I can deal with the morning stuff alone,” Asriel replies, and he leans down to kiss your forehead, the short fur on his nose velvety and comforting against your skin. “C’mon, Frisk, let’s get ready for school.”

 _I want to stay home too,_ you clearly see them sign. Their face is flushed deep red, and their eyes are narrowed, like they’re holding in tears only by sheer determination. _I don’t want to leave Chara all alone._

“I’ll have my phone if I need anything,” you tell them, but they just shake their head.

“Well… I guess it wouldn’t be too productive to send you to school if you’re upset and can’t concentrate,” Asriel says, folding his arms. What a softie. “But you should at least go to class in the afternoon, okay? Chara can take you on their way to come to work with me.”

Frisk sticks their tongue out, but they nod all the same.

“I’m just going to go to sleep,” you warn them. “It’s going to be boring.”

 _Then I’ll go back to sleep too,_ they say.

“Okay, sleepyheads,” Asriel says. “I’m going to go get ready for work. Text me or call me if anything comes up, all right? I love you both.”

You pull one hand out from under the covers to raise it in farewell. Asriel smiles, his expression still vaguely worried, and then turns the lights almost all the way down and steps outside, pulling the door almost closed behind him.

Frisk steps out of their shoes and crawls up onto the bed between you and the wall, burrowing under the covers next to you like a cat and poking their face out next to your left shoulder.

“Hi,” you say. They smile. “Don’t forget to take your glasses off.”

Frisk blinks at you and then squirms to get their hands up so that they can obey you, depositing the glasses on one of Asriel’s pillows where they probably won’t be disturbed.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” you tell them. You really ought to get an arm up and around them, but if you try to sleep on your side you probably won’t be able to _stay_ asleep for long, and also your limbs feel leaden, sinking you deeper into the mattress.

Frisk shakes their head and presses up against you, closing their eyes.

You turn your chin so that you can stretch to kiss their forehead, and then relax. You’re just so exhausted, and the sheets are so heavy, and the bed is so warm…

 

 

_A familiar voice is calling your not-name, and twin reactions bloom and wither inside you: The half of you that melts like butter and the half that curdles in fear._

_You peek around the corner, nearly tripping over the hems of your baby overalls, and your hands and your fingers where you grip the wall are perfect and unscarred, no joint damage rendering them stiff and clumsy in this memory._

_Your mother, down the hall, laughs and beckons you. She looks so much like you as you are now—her hair is long and curly but the same color as yours, her face is only a little softer than your own, her eyes the color of milk chocolate or warm polished wood. She reaches out to the you in the dream and snatches up your child’s hand, leads you trotting at her side into the kitchen and lifts you up to sit on the counter with the bowl and the ingredients, the potatoes and the peeler, eggs and lemon juice and orange zest, little glass containers of pepper and basil and cumin that you aren’t allowed to touch._

_“Keep it a secret from daddy,” she says to you tenderly with a finger to her lips, and you giggle and imitate her. She wears her wedding ring on her left hand._

_Even though it’s the wrong time of year for it she sings Chad Gadya with you just because you like it, you stumbling over the pronunciation and too young to stay in tune but her looking at you like a treasure anyway._

_It doesn’t last. It never lasts, these mercurial moments of love and kindness, like sudden rain showers from a sunny sky, leaving rainbows after them. Blink and they’re over, blink and they’ll end, and you when you were still too little and too stupid to do anything but love her unconditionally thought that all you could ever do was hold on to these moments with all your strength and hope they would never end._

_She reaches out in the dream like she really did at the time to pat your head, stroke your hair, but her fingers wind into the locks at the nape of your neck and the wrongness of it strikes in the pit of your stomach just before she grips you by the hair and muscles you bodily off the counter, her hands in your hair your hair your hair your_

_father pinning you down with a hand around your throat, horror of a door creaking open when it shouldn’t, and he’s opening you up with a carving knife but instead of your arms it’s your stomach, your chest, every place he ever threatened to touch._

_Here as in real life you’re reaching to your mother where she stands listlessly at the wall avoiding your eyes, blood dripping from her nose and staining her mouth like grotesque lipstick. It took another three days before she could go to the hospital, with new wounds over the top to hide that she’d been punched, and it healed slightly crooked. But your voice won’t come out, you’re opening your mouth and reaching but you can’t scream. Buttercups and grass, thick white clover have grown up into your throat and your lungs and choke you into silence_

_and you on the floor like so much carved meat with no sense of pain, of pain, just the feverish kaleidoscope of a hundred million unwanted hands and you_

_reach up and grasp the knife by the handle and the blade and you smile,_

_god god god you will give these people ruthless if that is all they seek from you._

_The dream changes again and you’re running stumbling up the mountain paths but nothing like real life they are chasing you, their hands clinging like tar to pull you back like the village is the hell they describe in their own myths. The cave mouth glows from within like you’d find a gentle fire just inside but you cannot reach it, clawing at the dirt until your fingers bleed you cannot possibly escape, your father grabs the back of your shirt and you cannot remember his face but you remember his VOICE_

You wake with the vigor of someone clawing to the water’s surface after having been held under for almost too long, cold sweat soaking your back and bright stitches of pain over the root of your left breast.

Frisk jolts awake next to you, and they grip at your sleeve as you look aimlessly around your room, their eyes wide with concern.

You make a face.

 _It’s nothing,_ you sign to them. _Just a nightmare._

 

 

You can’t very well go straight to work (or take Frisk straight to school) drenched in sweat and jittering, so you shower off first, half leaning against the door bar as the hot spray pounds on your shoulders.

Prase told you yesterday that you’d visibly lost weight—ten to twenty pounds, you think they said. You don’t _like_ to look at yourself in mirrors anymore when you’re naked, hate having the loose empty flesh in your breasts and stomach thrown in your face, hate staring at the patches of white in your body hair. Everyone keeps _commenting_ on how worn-down you are, how old, and you want to break something and scream because forty should still be too young to be this broken down but you _are_ this broken down. How many years do you have left before it’s not just your face that’s lined and wrinkled? How many years do you have left before you start to get spots on your hands, before your joints are _so_ worn down and arthritic that you can’t fight anymore, before you start using your trident as a walking stick instead of a weapon?

Even you, when you protested to Asriel about the difference in your lifespans fifteen years ago, were not expecting to age _this_ prematurely.

It feels almost as though the old legends you’ve always clung to for comfort and strength are mocking you, these days. But you’re too tired to despair. It feels almost as if this is something you should have expected all along.

Still. One more day plus change. You can keep all this buttoned up for that long, at least.

You shut the shower off and reach for a towel so that you’ll have to look at your own wasted body as little as possible before you get dressed.

 

 

“Be good, all right?” you murmur to Frisk, and kiss the top of their head again.

They wrap both arms around your waist and hug you tight; you drape your arms over their shoulders and back and rest your chin on top of their head until they decide to let go on their own.

“I’ll see you tonight,” you promise, reaching out just once more to touch the side of their face. Frisk smiles and leans into the touch like a happy cat—your child is _so cute ugh_ —before stepping back and waving and ducking through their school’s doors.

You watch them until they’re out of sight, then square your shoulders with a sigh. Asriel is in meetings in Home all day today, and you need to be there to back him up to make up for your break this morning.

There’s still work to be done, and it’s your duty to do all that you possibly can until the end.

 

 

The city of Home is the same as ever: Cracked with age, worn around the edges, its streets still trod by the feet (or paws, or other appendages) of monsters who remained here even after their royal family moved to the other end of the Ebott caverns. It’s a calm and peaceful place, settled into its old age with a dignity that you can only side-eye balefully; you can understand why Asgore and Toriel moved back to it in their retirement.

Asriel’s afternoon meetings are all in the castle hall, the aged sibling to your castle in New Home. In between the wall sconces there are baskets of lush flowers probably supplied by your in-laws, and despite how weathered the walls are they’re kept very clean.

None of the monsters here have any word yet about tomorrow’s attempt, but they seem more energetic and hopeful than they did yesterday, just as yesterday they seemed more energetic and hopeful than the day before. It’s probably just that monsters are so sensitive to emotions and the soul that they’ve been picking up on the atmosphere, but everyone who actually _is_ in the know has noted the changes in the underground’s overall mood.

Today’s meetings are mostly check-ups on community projects and check-ins with clerks and local authorities about any recent goings-on. It’s been about half a year since the large aquariums have been drained and cleaned, so you and Asriel have to plan how to move aquatic monsters around to different tanks temporarily while each unit is cleaned and restocked with water. This particular kind of logic puzzle is something that Toriel is better at than either of you, but with the help of the locals you get a plan set up and double-checked.

One of the aquarium monsters, a former Waterfall resident called Onionsan, is apparently complaining about how this will cut into their band practice, ruffling feathers (er, scales?) throughout their local subdivision. Asriel patiently offers ideas for solutions, you do your best not to laugh at the idea of a band called “Red Hot Chibi Peppers”, and on you move to the next meeting, and the next.

Asriel seems to be trying his best to keep you off your feet for too long, which you are grateful for but also makes you something a little deeper and more tired than the word _frustrated_ can cover. You worked so hard to make it here, to be useful and effective at his side, and barring emergency situations you’ve always handled ruling as equals. You wanted to be able to stay equals until the end.

It’s still a fact that you wouldn’t be able to make it through today if you had to stand the entire time, though, so. When it gets to be too much, you inhale soft and small and then breathe out, trying to let go of the residual shame and resentment.

The work will never be done, really. That’s the nature of the work, especially when you’re in a position of authority and have the power to actually make a significant difference in the lives of your whole kingdom. Not being _able_ to finish the work is one thing, but abandoning it is unconscionable.

Where do you draw the line, though? Your body cannot keep up any longer, your mind is strained; what is _I cannot_ and what is just _I won’t?_

You can’t ever know, because people are too biased to judge from their own limited perspective. All you really can know is that you’re tired.

Asriel offers you his arm as the two of you leave the castle main to walk the city streets, and you take it, bearing yourself up on his solid warmth. He would probably carry you if you asked, but you won’t. He’s worried enough as it is, and you don’t want him to catch on to how bad you really feel.

Occasional patters of rain filter into the cavern from the surface, spreading chill and the sharp fresh scent of petrichor along the streets. Reaper Bird and their extended family, all three parts, are gathered in one of the community gardens. You can see some of Reaper Bird’s errant bullets floating out to alight upon bright red anemones, and a Whimsalot encouraging a Whimsun to join in with their own bullets. You lean against Asriel and smile. The warm sight makes the weather almost worth it.

If you close your eyes and strain your ears, you think you can just barely hear thunder off in the distance.

On your way back to the castle—you’ll need to ascend to Asgore and Toriel’s living quarters to meet with Frisk—you and Asriel encounter the Nice Cream guy, and pick up ice cream sandwiches for yourselves and for Frisk just because. He waves you on your way, and you find a bench to sit on with Asriel, leaning into his soft fur while you eat.

“Your color’s finally almost back,” Asriel comments, licking his chops as if he intends to clear them of any remaining ice cream traces but really just smearing cookie crumbs and streaks of mint into his fur. “That’s good, I was getting really worried.”

“What a charmer you are, Ree Dreemurr,” you tell him dryly. “You have ice cream on your face, doofus. Let me get it.”

He bends his head obediently. You wet your fingers with your tongue and wipe his mouth for him; he catches you off guard by gently closing his mouth on your fingertips and sucking them clean.

When he drops your hand at last, he looks at your face and then grins, all pointy teeth and the boyish charm that only a man with the looks of an eternal twenty-something can still muster at age forty. “There,” he says. “That’s a lot better.”

A beat later you realize that he’s referring to your blush, and you gently pinch the ends of his floppy ears to keep him from retreating. “Oh, you’re in for it _now.”_

“Egad,” says Asriel, and you lean in the rest of the way to kiss him before he can shut his silly mouth.

You drop his ears to stroke his cheeks and gently run your fingertips through his mane, and close your eyes as he folds warm strong arms around your upper body. Your heart rushes when you tilt your head and inhale, plunging and slowing when you breathe out. Asriel shifts one hand up to cup the back of your head and the nape of your neck, laps at the corner of your lips, and the shiver that runs up your back has nothing to do with the weather.

When he pulls back from the kiss you’re literally dizzy. It strongly reminds you of being thirteen and how powerfully it undid the both of you when you finally started to figure out how to kiss well—how to use tongue, how to compensate for the very different shapes of your mouths. Your whole face is likely radiant red, and you bury it in Asriel’s chest, closing your eyes and waiting for the rollicking gallop in your chest to calm.

He lets you stay like that for a while.

 

 

 _Think i kinda wanna call off anime night,_ Alphys texts you later, when you’re home and curled up in the fireside chair with warm toes and a teacup in one hand.

 _No more people spoons this close to the wire?_ you ask her.

Alphys sends a _:p_ emoji and then _LMAO wELL think itd just stress everybody out more to be like… a giant stress conference of stress???_

 _Infinite stress loop,_ you suggest. _Endless stress fractals._

 _YA P MUCH?????????_ Alphys replies.

 _That works out fine,_ you send back. _We would’ve had to leave early anyway for family things. It’s probably better for most of us to have a lowkey night to relax and mentally prepare for tomorrow instead of gorging ourselves on pizza and soda, wouldn’t you say?_

 _BL E AR g H,_ says Alphys. _Anywya sorry 4 the short notice. See yuo tomorrow??_

 _See you,_ you reply, and return your phone to your pocket. “Anime night’s canceled,” you call to Asriel. “Everyone needs to rest.”

He frowns at you from over the top of his book, pushing his glasses up. “What d’you want me to do for dinner?”

“Something that’s not too heavy, I suppose.” And you turn to Frisk, who’s sprawled on the floor on their belly reading comics. “Do you have any votes?”

 _I want latkes,_ they sign. _And spaghetti._

“Maybe not both of those for the same meal,” you say, trying to smile but remembering your dream from earlier. “Can you pick one?”

Frisk scrunches up their face in thought, then brightens. _Matzo ball soup???_

“It’s a little out of season, but why not?” You turn back to Asriel. “Do we still have everything we need for that?”

“Uhh… probably??? I’ll go check,” he says, and he dogears his page like a complete brute and sets his book down, pushing the chair back. You watch him disappear into the kitchen and then settle back in your chair, draining the last of your tea.

Frisk is kicking their feet in the air excitedly, their wrists crossed atop their comic and their chin on their wrists, eyes fixing you with that shocking sky blue while they wiggle happily.

“You seem to be enjoying yourself despite the lack of anime night,” you observe aloud, and they giggle and push themself up.

 _I like family dinner and I like matzo ball soup,_ they say, and then they roll over onto their back on the rug and stick their feet up. _I miss going to temple, a little._

“You’ll be able to do that again soon, if you want to,” you tell them. “Even if tomorrow doesn’t work out, it’s not going to be long now. We might not make it in time for Sukkot this year, but you getting to have Hanukkah on the surface at least seems likely.”

 _And you can come with me!_ Frisk signs excitedly. _I remember you said you never got to celebrate Purim before, so we’ve GOT to do that. It’s the best._

“We’ll see,” you say, your smile going a little flat.

Frisk sets their feet back on the floor, legs bent, their face falling a little. _I think—I think even if I went back to the temple the next town over again, they’d recognize me, though._

“That’s a very fair thing to not want to deal with,” you tell them. “There might be other ones nearby, though, where you won’t have to worry.”

Frisk still looks unsure, but you’re saved from having to think of some other way to comfort them by Asriel yelling, “Okay, we do have enough stuff! I’ll get right on it, dinner’ll be real soon.”

“Thanks,” you call back. Frisk puts hands and feet into the air again and rolls back over, sitting up and scooting across the floor on their butt until they’re leaned up against your chair leg.

You sat like that with Toriel where you are right now, once a long time ago. You shift your empty teacup from your right hand to your left and reach down to pat Frisk’s hair, a gesture they sigh gustily at and lean into.

Every moment of every day you discover a new way to be tired, it feels like. These quiet times are a bare sustenance. Sort of like plugging in a battery that’s too old to hold a charge properly anymore. The cut stalks in vases on the mantelpiece with their clusters of dark blue flowers, grape hyacinths from Asriel’s garden, attract your eye until your vision blurs, unable to hold a focus.

Then Asriel is saying “Okay, food’s ready!” and abruptly you’re aware of the thick, spicy smell of the soup: There’s a hint of saffron in the fragrance of the broth, and despite yourself you can feel your mouth begin to water.

Frisk is already scrambling up from beside you, sprinting to the table as you struggle to reorient yourself.

“Chara?” Asriel calls from the table. You shake your head and carefully get to your feet.

“I just dozed off for a minute, don’t worry. I’m all right.”

You get a glass of water instead of refilling your teacup; caffeine is almost certainly not going to help you not wake up ten times tonight. The broth is salty and thick with vegetables and floating bits of egg; you cut off part of the ball of matzah meal with the side of your spoon so that you can get as much in one bite as you can.

“Very good,” you say, and Asriel puffs up with pride across from you.

As they usually do, Frisk puts away two and a half bowls to your one and Asriel’s two. They would probably go for more if you let them, but Asriel puts the rest of the soup away in the fridge and then comes back with fried donuts for dessert to placate them. The donuts are a shock to your tongue after the salt and savory flavors of the soup, thickly sweet and satisfying in a way that leaves you without further appetite after you’ve eaten only one.

“Okay, kid, blood pressure again,” you announce to Frisk, who’s just cleaned their dessert plate for the second time. They roll their eyes a little at your insistence on the daily ritual when they could still be eating, but they obediently stretch out their arm at you when Asriel stretches to get the machine and notebook.

“Still looking all right,” you report as you write the final numbers into today’s NIGHT slot. “Shall I wash the dishes, then?”

“No, Frisk and I’ll get ‘em,” Asriel says immediately and naturally, already standing up. Frisk gets up too without complaint, following their father back into the kitchen. “You just stay put for a minute or two.”

You lift your hands briefly in resigned disgust. “This show of chivalry is probably not as cute and winning as you believe it to be, my dears.”

From the kitchen, you hear the faucet begin to run, and then above it Asriel’s voice: “Oh, don’t worry, this is just until you’re feeling better. Then you can do as many dishes as you want forever.”

You roll your eyes and deliberately choose not to make a remark that will alarm them both, resting your weight back in your chair.

Eventually the two of them emerge, and right away Asriel catches your eyes meaningfully, so you reach out and call, “Hang on a moment, Frisk” when your child starts to head back to the living room.

They stop and stare at you, wide-eyed and bewildered, glasses slipping down their nose. You can’t help but smile a little at just how _cute_ they really honestly are; Asriel pulls his chair back out and sits, and you beckon at Frisk until they return to theirs too.

“Ree and I have been getting plans together this past week,” you begin, “to combat a worst-case scenario where your birth parents _do_ come out of the woodwork to try to take you back. Now that we have our ammo lined up, as it were, we thought you’d probably appreciate us actually telling you what our plans are instead of just telling you that we _have_ a plan and leaving you in the dark on the specifics. At least if I were in your position, I’d be worried that it’d just be glossing over the fact that any plans are still unformed.”

Frisk’s eyebrows raise and their lips part slightly. Then they press their mouth closed, folding their lower lip under their teeth, and they narrow their eyes and nod seriously. _Yeah, I think I would feel better knowing._

“The major things we have lined up are that your birth parents literally abandoned you on Mt. Ebott and never came back for _actual days,”_ Asriel begins, “and that you yourself want to stay with Chara and me. We don’t know whether or not any sort of human court would recognize the fact that under our kingdom’s laws you have been legally adopted into the Dreemurr family, but all our documentation has your own signed consent on it, and that should at least count for something.”

Frisk nods. _I hope so._

“Various monsters and all the fallen humans can vouch for the fact that you’ve been treated well in this household, to back up your own word,” you continue. “And we also have Toriel, Gaster, and Alphys’ records of your medical health from the time that you arrived here up until now. It would be most ideal if we could get your health records from the time you lived on the surface to help back us up, but even just the difference between your health at age 10 when you first got here and your health right now will help us argue that your birth parents were neglecting you so badly that it was endangering your life, whereas we are taking adequate care of you now. Toriel’s reports on your health are especially well-written, Gaster has photographic evidence, and Alphys has years’ worth of medical charts.

“You were five feet tall when you came to us, but you only weighed about seventy pounds. You told Toriel yourself that your parents hadn’t bothered to have you on the glucocorticoid replacements you _need_ to keep your stress hormone levels and your blood pressure down for the past several years before they abandoned you. You know that’s why you were so big for your age—it could’ve stunted your growth permanently if we hadn’t been able to get you back on medication. The fact that you were already on medication once before means that you _had_ to have been diagnosed, and your parents _had_ to have been told how important your treatment was, but they weren’t willing to procure that for you.

“There’s the matter of your wrist injury, too.” When you say this, Frisk grips their right wrist in their left hand. The scar is no longer quite so livid now that it’s two years old, but it’s still bright white; against Frisk’s olive skin it sticks out very obviously. “You told us you were hospitalized when you attempted, but once you were discharged you were left to care for it by yourself. Asriel and Toriel healed it right away because your immediate need was more important than taking pictures—and we didn’t know yet at that point who you would want to stay with—but even just looking at the scarring should be enough for a professional to understand that it wasn’t cared for well.”

“And there’s also stuff like getting you to a human psychiatrist for an evaluation—I mean, well, we should anyway, we don’t have many of those down here because the dangers of mental illness for humans and monsters are so different, you don’t have to worry about falling down,” Asriel goes on for you. “But that or talking to a counselor or therapist is probably the best way to give evidence as to how the way your birth parents treated you has affected you mentally. Honestly I’d rather use this as backup for if physical evidence seems like it might not be enough, because, well… we don’t want to rush you into picking scabs off of old wounds before you feel like you’re ready to do that yourself.”

“If something does happen, getting in touch with your old temple community might be advantageous,” you add. “Getting the testimony of other people who knew your blood family and might be willing to come down on our side, tell people you were mistreated, will be good for us.

“Anyway, that ought to be enough evidence to keep your birth parents from claiming you, _if_ they were to come forward and fight us on that. But we also want to keep you from being taken away from us and put into the foster system too, because if Prase’s experiences are anything to go on, it’s not well-managed in this region.”

“We _might_ be able to go through with formally adopting you under human law too, though that’ll depend on exactly how the humans want to deal with us,” Asriel says. “But hey, Chara at least is a US citizen, so they might have more luck with that than me, haha.”

“It’s going to depend on a lot of variables, anyway,” you add. “But we have no intention whatsoever of letting your birth parents have you back, or letting other humans take you away. You are _our_ baby now, and the rest of the world had better get used to it.”

Frisk laughs a little at this, as you hoped they would. It sounds wet; their eyes are rimmed damp behind their glasses. _I hope so,_ they sign, and then their mouth crumples a little. _Please don’t let them take me away._

You reach out and rest a hand on their shoulder. “They’re never getting you back,” you tell them. “Finders keepers, after all.”

Frisk laughs again and buries their face in their hands. Asriel rises from his chair, takes one smooth step, and scoops them up into his arms, rocking them in the same easy practiced way he used to rock Papyrus, murmuring “There, there, it’s going to be all right” the same way his own father used to tell him. Used to tell you.

You lean back, rest your face on the heel of your hand, and watch the picture they make against the warm silver of the living room, the snap of magical fire in the hearth, so obviously father and child despite the difference in species that you feel a little like they’re beaming tiny hearts in every direction: Not like monster bullets so much as a panel from a manga, like you should expect to get beaned in the head with them and for them to bounce off. Frisk has their arms as far up and around Asriel’s shoulders as they can get, their face buried in his chest, soaking up comfort.

Looking at them fills you with a bone-deep ease that’s almost a sadness. You know they’re going to be all right, no matter what.

 

 

You and Asriel put Frisk to bed in their own room after one last mug of butterscotch milk and a significant amount of cuddling, and for the first time all week you feel confident that they’re actually going to be able to sleep the whole night without needing to come join you.

Asriel looks at you and you look at him and you raise your eyebrows at each other for a while, and after you get everything put away and turn off the lights in the rest of the house, he hangs the bell on its ribbon on the outside doorknob so that if Frisk _does_ wake up and need you, they’ll know to knock first.

You sit down on the bed and prop yourself up on your arms, crossing your legs; Asriel shucks off his sweater and skirt and deposits them on the floor without ceremony to stand naked in the middle of the room, his only remaining adornments the locket and his ring. He stretches, spreading his toes, probably half to put on a show for you and half just to relieve his muscles. You smile and watch him: The curve of his spine, the generous slope of his stomach, the dear angle of his shoulders and the way his hands nearly graze the ceiling when he holds his arms up behind himself like this. The way the skin and fur along the top of his muzzle crinkles during his half-snarling yawns, and all the places his fur tips gold.

“That is a _real_ weight off my mind,” Asriel says, probably of your talk with Frisk; he looks more relaxed and less harangued than he has all week. “I know we mostly just did the basic work to reassure Frisk, but it really is good to have a base plan already worked out before we even break the Barrier and try opening up diplomatic relations with the humans. _If_ this ever turns out to be a problem it’s not gonna be one for a while, so it feels real… I dunno, organized.”

“I’m sorry,” you tell him, and he turns to look at you owlishly.

“Well heck, what for?”

“You wouldn’t have had the weight on your mind in the first place if I hadn’t been complaining to you then,” you remind him. “Frisk wouldn’t have overheard me either. So, I’m sorry.”

Asriel sits on the floor next to the bedside, his knees splayed out to the sides to avoid pinching his belly, and slouches back on his hands so that you can talk on eye level. “Aw, Chara, you don’t have to be sorry. You were worried about all kinds of parent things back then too, and it’s better to talk about that stuff than it is to bottle it up. And it’s all turned out okay in the end, hasn’t it?”

You look at your husband, at his earnest and easy joy, and resist the urge to sigh. Instead you straighten up and then lean forward, resting your cheek against his forehead so that yours is pressed against the base of his horn, and you lightly lace your arms around his face and the back of his neck and close your eyes.

Asriel shifts, and his left hand comes up to stroke your side and back. He lets you stay like this for a little while, maybe a couple minutes, before he says—voice muffled in your shirt—“Okay, Chara, I’m not gonna pretend like I _don’t_ enjoy having my face buried in your boobs like this—”

You can’t help but laugh. It starts out weak, more like a cough, but you can’t stop; you reach up and grip Asriel’s horns to keep yourself from falling off the side of the bed and straight into his lap. Tears burn at the seams of your closed eyes, and with your face still pressed into his fur you’re sure he’ll be able to tell, but not even you can fully identify how much of the tears are from hysteria and how much is despair.

Asriel keeps patting your flank until you push yourself up and wipe your face off; when you lower your hands, he strokes from your shoulder to your wrist and shifts again so that he can support both of your hands in his as he gazes into your face.

“Is something wrong?” he finishes finally. “I know we’ve all been really stressed lately, between work and tomorrow’s experiment and worrying about Frisk, and I know you’re still sorta anxious about mingling with humans once the Barrier’s broken, but—you seem real listless lately, Char. You know you can talk to me about anything, if you want to.”

And he just sounds so openly loving and concerned that you breathe in without even thinking about it first. Your brain catches up to you the next second, so that you hold it and then breathe out instead.

_Did you know that in the old story, Moses never reached the Promised Land? That in some of the interpretations, they say that it was as a penance for the mistakes he made?_

But if you say that to Asriel he won’t understand, and will want you to explain—or he will understand, and will understand too much. So you elect to remain silent.

“Chara?” Asriel says again, and you know that even if it doesn’t show on your face, he can read in your silence that there are thoughts you’re keeping to yourself.

So you smile at him, awkward and lopsided. “I’ve just been feeling very old and tired lately, that’s all.”

“Yeah?” Asriel says. He swirls the pads of his thumbs over the backs of your fingers.

He’s really not going to let this go until you give him something, and if that something is an _I don’t want to talk about it_ he’s going to worry, so you shrug.

“Everyone’s been informing me lately how the years have evidently hit me like a ton of bricks,” you say at length. “And I hate to admit it, but they aren’t exactly wrong. I’m less able-bodied than I once was, and that stings, because I had to claw my way back there from more or less completely incapacitated after the buttercups. I’m not as fast as I was, or as strong as I was. I don’t bounce back from things like I used to, either. If I stop being able to do things I’m used to, I know I ought to expect not to get those things back. I thought I was going to have longer before age started to get to me. It’s very frustrating. And…”

“And?” Asriel prompts, rubbing your hands again. You sigh.

“And I don’t know if it would bother me this much if we’d been able to age at the same rate,” you admit, looping your thumbs around Asriel’s and holding them still. “But I’m withering up in the merciless winds of time and you’re—” you sigh again here, wistful this time. “You’re still golden and perfect as spring. It’s less that you’re reminding me of the things I’m losing and more that… sometimes it’s hard for me to understand how you can look at me and still want me. You’re all young and hale and virile! And for all that you profess enjoying having your face buried in my tits, they are not as perky as they were ten years ago, let alone twenty.”

Asriel lifts his chin to nuzzle your cheek. You let him, starting to feel silly.

“It’s a lot less about how you look and more that you’re you,” he says, gentle and patient. “I’m going to keep wanting you for as long as you want me. And even if we have to stop having sex someday down the line, that’s not going to change the fact that I’m always going to love you, that I’ll always want to stay by your side.”

You reach up and stroke his face. “Are you sure this isn’t just flattery? Can you really promise that if I made eyes at you one day when I’m _really_ wrinkled and gray, it’s not going to make your dick wilt on the spot in light of how you will always have the spry visage of a twenty-something?”

Asriel has the gall to actually laugh at you, which doesn’t really inspire that much confidence actually; thanks, loving husband. “Chara, if it will make you feel better, I’m gonna give you full disclosure here: I decided I was absolutely definitely going to propose to you when you were on one of your really nasty periods, when you were bleeding all over the bed and me and everything and you were completely drenched in sweat. You’re always _dear_ to me whether you look your best or not. I won’t stop loving you or stop being attracted to you just because of your age.

“And no matter what I look like, I’m always gonna want to pick on someone my own age rather than some kid who’s only half as old as me anyway, so you can relax.”

It’s really easy for him to say that, so you just look at him with your eyebrows upraised until he shakes his head.

“Do you want me to show you?” he asks, low and gentle.

Heat blooms on your face, all the way to the tips of your ears and the nape of your neck, want a sharp and immediate ache all through you.

“Yes,” you whisper, suddenly hoarse.

Asriel stands, helping you to your feet, and together you gather up all the pillows into a gentle slope against the headboard. By the time you’re done your heart is pounding, much more pleasantly than it has any other time today.

He traces your mouth tenderly, carefully, with the pad of his thumb and then bends down to kiss you slow and smoldering. You only break the kiss so that he can help you out of each article of clothing, removing your shirt and your pants and each of your braces with deep care and respect; his touch is almost timid when he holds your hips as you strip your sports bra off yourself.

At last he rests you back against the pillows, and spends a while again with his mouth on yours, tender, languid.

And with those gentle hands, with his gentle mouth, he shows you: Touching and kissing the loose flesh of your chest where it’s lost elasticity, your stomach and your thighs where you’ve lost weight. He goes on showing you, warm and mellow but stubborn, until you’re sighing, smiling, guiding him with hands laid softly atop his head.

You have him like that, over and over, as many times and in as many ways as you can stand: And you feel something that you had given up on feeling ever again, a lovely loose sensation like your whole body is made of liquid light.

When you close your eyes much later, it’s to a much more pleasant exhaustion.

 

 

You wake up the next morning feeling rested for the first time in a long, long while: A small mercy. You lie eyes open in the dark for some time, staring up at the ceiling, not really thinking about anything at all. Your heart ought to be racing, you ought to feel downright sick, but your primary emotion is unnatural calm.

After a while you sit up. Immediately your lower back cramps, and you grimace; yesterday’s laundry still litters the floor where you and Asriel dumped it all. It appears that you won’t be freed of mundane indignities just because today is the day.

You make to stand, but Asriel reaches out and touches your shoulder, and you turn.

He’s lying there on his side with eyes wide open and small lines of worry on his brow. Careful, you twist around and lean over to kiss him good morning.

“Are you nervous?” he asks in a tiny quiet voice.

“Beyond nerves,” you answer, smiling lopsided. “And you?”

“Scared witless,” he says, and giggles a little. You giggle back and kiss him again.

“There’s still time before we have to go,” you say, “and we still have things to do.”

He groans. “You’re right, you’re right.” And he sits up with a grunt.

You throw on underwear and braces, a comfortable pair of jeans and a random t-shirt, and head out of the room in long strides towards the bathroom so that you can clean up a little. It’s one thing knowing that you’ll be beyond embarrassment and yet another thinking about it and getting embarrassed right now, so imperfect as your efforts may be you still try your best, and slap a pad on just in case. You wash your hands, wash your face, brush your teeth. Give yourself a long hard look in the mirror, sigh at the 1:1 ratio of white and red in your hair, wipe your hands off on your pants and jog back to the main quarters of the house.

The ribbon with the bell is still hanging off your doorknob, so you take it off and lay it back atop the desk where it usually goes. Asriel is standing in the middle of the room adjusting his formal robes, straightening his locket where it rests on top of the Delta Rune over his chest.

You take your t-shirt off and throw it in the hamper: It’s going to be much too cold out by the Barrier to go in just this.

“Ugh,” Asriel says, muffled; you turn to see that he has his hands over his muzzle and his eyes squeezed tightly shut. He huffs out a breath into his hands. “I guess I’ll… go get breakfast and tea started, and call the school to get Frisk out of class today.”

“Okay,” you tell him. You’re seized with the urge to fling yourself into his arms and hold him, keep him here with you until the last moments, but you just fold your hands and smile. “I’ll pick out what I’m wearing and then meet you at the table.”

Asriel nods, still looking worried as ever. He turns and disappears out the door, pulling it closed after you.

Still you feel no fear. Maybe there’s something wrong with you. Creeping towards the huge hole in the cave with the thought to jump into it, even just intending to assess it first, your heart had been hammering, you’d been terrified. Bedbound and dying of poison, you’d thought a lot about death and what it would feel like to lose your body—you’d been scared the whole time, had just pushed that feeling aside with determination. This morning, facing the destruction of the Barrier, the end of everything—you still only feel placid, like photos of an inch of rain over salt flats, reflecting a perfect seamless mirror of the sky.

You linger in front of the closet for several minutes, dithering between a sweater in that old familiar shade of green and your short formal tunic. You reach out to the tunic, gather its fabric between your fingertips and rub for a while, then give up and take out the sweater instead, pulling it over your head and adjusting it to sit right on your shoulders. This is more fitting, you think.

Smiling a little, you walk to the desk and open the top drawer, taking your knife’s red-swirled sheath out to swap it for the plain black one before you clip it to your belt loop. This feels so much better.

You grab your old red hightops and carry them with you into the living room, only sitting down to put them on and lace them up once you’re at your reading chair. Asriel’s on the phone pacing, explaining the edited version of the situation to Frisk’s teacher; you can smell French toast cooking, hear it sizzle a little even from where you’re sitting.

At last Asriel hangs up and squinches his face up and returns to the kitchen, squirmy as a sack full of puppies.

You look around the house—around your precious home, the only _real_ home you’ve ever had. Every inch is packed with memories, good and bad; though your heart is still tranquil, your vision blurs for just a moment, and you have to reach up and brush your fingers over your cheeks quickly so that Asriel doesn’t walk back in to find tears on your face.

The nemophila sitting in the vase on the table are bright; they draw your eye no matter how you try to look away. The monsters will get to see the sky soon for real, and not just through humans’ discarded media and tiny cracks in the cave ceiling. Will they weep at its beauty? Or will it feel alien to them, after so long being safely covered in stone and earth?

You hear footsteps coming from your left: It’s Frisk, yawning, wearing a t-shirt and a short skirt over their favored black tights. They’ve got their new pair of boots on, too.

“Are you sure you won’t be too cold in that?” you ask them, and they swing around to look at you, almost startling.

 _I’m okay,_ they say, and give you two thumbs up.

“As long as you’re sure,” you tell them, and they continue on to sit at the table. You pull yourself up and cross the room to your own chair to take your medicine and their blood pressure.

Asriel comes back out about five minutes later, carrying plates as well as the skillet with toast slices still sizzling on it.

“You only have to give me half a slice,” you tell him. “If I eat any more than that I’m probably going to start getting sick.”

Asriel gives you a blatantly concerned stare, but sighs and does as you say, giving the other half of your toast to Frisk, who wiggles happily in their chair. He returns to the kitchen to put the skillet in the sink before he arrives to sit with you and Frisk and eat.

You fork off tiny pieces of your toast slice and chew them slowly. They’re heavily seasoned with cinnamon more than sugar—Asriel learned this recipe from Toriel, after all, so naturally he shares her touch. The taste is almost too rich for you to handle, but you _will_ need at least a little energy to be able to see today through, so you keep eating at a steady pace until your plate is clear.

“At least let me wash the dishes today,” you half-joke, and Asriel mutely pushes his plate at you. Frisk, however, stands up still holding theirs.

“Me too?” they ask, and they just look so hopeful that you melt right away, smiling at them as widely as you can.

“If you want,” you say, and you take your plate and Asriel’s and head into the kitchen with your child at your side.

Frisk leans into you while you stand at the sink with the water running, each of you wielding a washcloth, mostly not bumping into each other because Frisk is right-handed.

They finish before you do, and set their plate in the drying rack; you pass your plate to them, then Asriel’s, and stand still washing the skillet while they rest their head on your shoulder, on standby. They make grabby hands for it as soon as you shut the faucet off.

Once they’ve got it set down, you wrap your arm around their shoulders and pull them close, hugging them to your chest and closing your eyes.

“Chara?” they say, their tiny voice muffled against your shirtfront.

“I love you,” you tell them quietly. “I will always love you. I wanted to keep you from the first day we met, Frisk. I love you with all my heart. Please always trust in that.”

You let them go, and they smile up at you. _Of course,_ they sign, beaming. _I’d never doubt you, Chara._

You remember something, for just a moment, and it’s only with effort that you hold back the shiver that would only confuse your poor baby.

“All right,” you tell them. “Let’s go get your dad up and running.”

They giggle and take your hand, swinging it as you head back into the living room.

Asriel is lying stretched out across the table, still groaning.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” he says as you approach. “What if I screw up? This is your _souls,_ Chara. Yours and everyone else’s. Can you really afford to trust me with something that precious?”

“Yes, we can,” you tell him. “There’s never been a day since we met that I _wouldn’t_ trust you with my soul. And besides, you’re the king. I know you’re going to do your best—not just because it’s your job, but because you love us all.”

He gives you absolutely the worst puppy dog eyes you’ve ever seen out of him in all your lives, and you grin at him.

“You’ve never been readier for this in your life,” you remind him.

Asriel sighs and rolls his eyes and pushes himself up, the chair scraping on the floor. “How many times does it make, now, that you’ve fed me that same old line?”

“In my defense,” you say, stretching out your hand for him to take, “it’s always worked.”

You walk down the stairs and over the winding ramparts hand-in-hand.

 

 

You, Asriel, and Frisk are the last ones to arrive.

The SSS machines are set up in a semicircle around the door to the Barrier; Alphys is in the center, puttering around the power unit, with Undyne leaning over her shoulder.

Holly is already sitting back in the nearest unit, looking completely relaxed; her friends Bratty and Catty are between her and the wall, chattering to each other and to her with obvious nervousness.

Next to her unit is Astis, also leaning back in his unit, straps and life support all done up. He’s tied his hair back for the occasion, and has an unusually solemn expression. Not so Mettaton, who’s hovering behind him, obviously preening as if to catch the lens of a camera that’s not here to film him; his pop star instincts must be behind this absurd behavior.

Then there’s Liron, who looks as if ze might already be falling asleep, hands folded gently on hir lap. In between hir unit and Innig’s is Gerson, both hands rested on his cane, observing Alphys’ last-minute checks with a beady and bespectacled eye.

Innig is turned to face Rufus, on her right side; the lovers seem to be conversing in soft voices, whatever they’re saying too quiet for you to pick up on without straining, and likely too private for you to try doing so without it being deathly rude. Rufus has both his parents here; Dogaressa’s tail is waving slowly, but she seems unsure, and Dogamy’s is so low it nearly trails on the cave floor.

Next to Rufus’ unit is Prase. They’re deep in conversation with their family, Gaster signing to them while Sans hooks them up to life support and Papyrus paces worriedly.

Asriel takes a deep deep breath and faces you and Frisk as if uncertain what he should do. You reach up to touch his face, and he leans down to kiss you: Once softly, and then again, deeper, anxious and urgent. You’re glad for the excuse to hold him to you with all your strength, tasting him thoroughly one last time.

Then Asriel eases back, and loathe as you are, you let him go. He nods to you and steps carefully over the SSS cables to approach Alphys; she turns towards him, and Undyne raises a hand to you in greeting as she moves to stand with Innig.

The unit next to Prase is still open, so you walk over to it. For all that you’ve been nearby for emergency savescumming through most of these things’ development, this is your first time actually using one; they look like very sci-fi full body terminals or something, metallic operating tables with attached straps to support your body. There are patches that go on your chest like an EKG that will monitor your vitals and also act as a defibrillator if necessary; these also connect you to the part of the machine that will keep your soul supported while it’s taken out of your body for Asriel to tap into.

You reach out and hug Frisk hard; they cling to you with the same anxiety that Asriel showed, and you hold them to you harder, kissing the top of their head, shamefully grateful for the excuse. You stay with your arms tight around them until they ease back, and only then do you clamber up onto the seat, frowning at the various straps.

“Here, lemme help ya with that,” Sans says, slouching towards you. “Fashionably late, huh?”

“Oh, but the lead role should _always_ have the most dramatic entrance!” Mettaton chirps from the other side of the room, and you grin.

“You heard the man,” you say affectionately. Sans shrugs, his own grin widening, and he tightens the straps around your waist and chest with a gentle, professional touch.

“’Scuse me,” he says, and you nod to him, letting him pull the fabric of your shirt back just enough for him to attach the life support pads over your heart.

“C-C—Chara,” Alphys calls from the middle of all this mechanical nonsense. “Will you—um, will you make a—a save point here, j-just in… in case?”

“Of course,” you tell her, and you grit your teeth.

It’s been thirty years since you last tried and failed to free the monsters. But now—with everyone’s hearts beating as one, as Undyne would put it—now, with all the love and the life you have to pour into this endeavor—you _will_ see it succeed.

Determination burns in your breast. Beside you, Frisk winces; you can see some of the other humans making faces, too.

“Ready,” you call. Alphys gives you a sweaty thumbs-up, and Asriel offers a wobbly smile. You have to force yourself, suddenly, not to cry as you smile back.

You can hear birds chirping from outside. Distantly, early-morning starlight and the first rays of dawn are filtering through the Barrier. It’s not long now.

You bite your lip a little. Frisk reaches out to take your hand in both of theirs, squeezing it; you squeeze their fingers back, gentle.

It’s been so long since you practiced with your mother, and your pronunciation is atrocious as ever. But that part doesn’t matter, because you can’t speak this out loud anyway. Still—still. You don’t know if you even remember the right words. It’s supposed to be a longer prayer, you know. If you had been raised properly—if only it weren’t for your father—this would be familiar as anything to you. You would’ve been raised saying it twice a day.

If it weren’t for your father, a lot of things would be different, you suppose. It might even have taken longer for you to come to Mt. Ebott, although you’re sure you would still have wound up here—would still have fallen in love with Asriel and made all the same mistakes—anyway.

You take a deep breath, hold it, and let it go.

Even if it’s imperfect, it’s still the best you can offer, and so you offer it: With what little power you have.

_Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad._

And you close your eyes.


	9. and we found home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter includes slightly more direct depiction of chara's past abuse (if you've picked up on the hints in past fics/earlier in this one you may already know what to expect, but just in case: heads up for violence, threats of murder and csa, and violent antisemitism/a few holocaust references). this depiction is brief.
> 
> further warnings specific to this chapter are hosted off-site [here](https://feralphoenix.tumblr.com/lightourselvesup) in order to avoid spoilers for anyone who wants to go into the finale blind. i strongly recommend only checking the detailed warnings if you have severe suicide-related triggers and NEED the spoiler warnings to protect yourself.

When you, Chara, and Frisk get to the Barrier, everybody else is already there.

All six of the other humans have already gotten into the SSS units and are surrounded by their friends and families; only the unit furthest from you is open. Alphys is in the middle with a notebook laptop in one arm, eyes narrowed at the command unit, sweating profusely. Undyne’s with her, looking over her shoulder; the two of them are conversing in low voices, and you can’t make out what they’re saying over everybody else talking.

You’re shivering all over. These nerves are worse than any you’ve ever had in your life—worse than coming out to your parents about you and Chara, worse than your first speech, worse than trying to recruit Alphys to her position and your coronation and proposing to Chara and your wedding and everything about Holly’s arrival to the underground. Probably worse than all those things _combined._ It’s awfully silly of you to be quailing at this point—Alphys and everyone have put so much work into this plan, into these machines, into safety checks and doublechecks. She’s done so much to make sure that this will be as safe as possible, and you trust her absolutely—she’s your best friend, after all.

It’s _yourself_ that you don’t quite trust. The enormity of what you’re about to do has been crashing down on you in one great big deluge since you woke up this morning, and… you don’t know if you can manage to not fuck this up. You can’t _afford_ to fuck this up.

You take a deep breath and then turn to Chara, blushing a little under your fur. They’ll have some form of reassurance for you, and you need to lean on them for as long as you can afford to rest against their strength. That’s not something you can do while you’re being the Responsible King and Steadfast Experiment Participant—Chara will be busy taking care of themself at that point, and you’ll need to be ready to be a wellspring of strength for everybody else.

Chara’s eyes meet yours, and they reach up to touch your face. Their expression is still completely calm, the way they usually are under pressure: They’ll have anxious fits before and they’ll cry after, but during any sort of crisis they’re always steady as a rock.

Past you was a dumbass not to realize that this would make you and Chara the perfect team. You’re so glad that Chara kicked your ass way back when, and gave you the chance to learn better.

You lean down to kiss them: First softly, just a light brush of your mouth against theirs, and then deeper as they tighten their hold on you, as you wrap your own arms around them, carefully supporting the back of their head and their waist.

After a couple of minutes you loosen your side of the hug and break the kiss so that your morale boost slash distraction from nerves won’t distract you to the point of getting randy at such an important time. Chara releases you a moment later, and you straighten up, looking into the dear face, the thin lines that frame their mouth and the dark bags under their eyes, the soft mouth and the unwavering red of their eyes.

Love fills you up, buoyant and shining. You nod to Chara; they nod back to you. They and Frisk head for the remaining unoccupied SSS unit, and you pick your way carefully through the different cables and pipes connecting all the machines with the command unit—you don’t want to make an ass of yourself tripping over or stepping on something and disconnecting or breaking it.

Undyne passes by you halfway, you guess heading back over to be with Innig while the experiment’s actually in progress.

Finally you reach Alphys, who looks every bit as sick as you feel. She smiles bravely at you, though, and it only wobbles a little, so you smile back.

“A-a-are you ready?” she whispers.

“Not really, but this is as ready as I can be,” you reply. “Are you okay?”

Alphys snorts. “I-if I c-can manage to uhh, not pee myself or hurl I think I c-can m… can deal,” she says, and the half-manic smile on her face resembles Undyne’s best shit-eating grins more than a little, which is cute. “You?”

“Uhh… about the same, actually.”

You both giggle. Just like the kiss with Chara, it’s really reassuring—acknowledging your fear instead of struggling to put it out of mind, and accepting the support of your friends.

“Are, uh… Toriel and Asgore coming?” Alphys asks.

“They said they’d be along later and to start without them,” you reply. “I think… as much as they want to be here if we succeed, they’re afraid to hope that we really will, so they’re timing it so that they’ll be along in another twenty minutes to half an hour or so, when they won’t have to watch.”

“T-that’s smart, I wish we c-could do the same,” Alphys says. “T-too bad that’s, uhhh, a little… um, really impossible???”

You laugh again. “Is there… uh, I dunno, something that I need to strap into like everybody else?”

She shakes her head, now looking at her computer and the control unit instead of at you. “No. You just, umm, once I g-get this started and the souls have separated you just… absorb them, and then when you’re… when you’re done you let them g-go. S-since they’re still connected to the hosts’ living b-bodies they’ll b-be able to return as smoothly as if this were a b-battle or their souls were just d-drawn out temporarily for some other r-reason.”

Alphys presses a few buttons on the control unit, which causes cheerful screens that you can’t make heads or tails of to pop up on her computer. “It’s on—on s-standby now. W-we can, uh, we c-can start whenever.” Her dark eyes flick up to you, and you swallow and clench your fists and nod.

“Okay,” Alphys says, very quietly, and then she straightens up and turns towards where Sans is finishing up getting Chara properly situated in their SSS unit. “C-C—Chara. Will you—um, will you make a—a save point here, j-just in… in case?”

“Of course,” Chara says. They press their lips together tightly and narrow their eyes; something on one of Alphys’ spindly graphs spikes, and all the humans wince. Then: “Ready,” they call.

Alphys gives Chara a thumbs up. You do your best to smile at your spouse, but you’re sure it comes out wobbly and awkward; their smile back at you seems pained. Frisk reaches out to them, and Chara takes their hand; watching closely, you can see Chara inhale deeply, close their eyes, and move their lips briefly as if mouthing something to themself.

You take a quick cursory look around the stony cave tunnel: At Prase with their eyes closed and their monster family hovering around them; at Rufus jiggling his leg and tapping his fingers while his parents stand at his sides, allergic to holding still as ever; at Undyne with a hand on Innig’s shoulder, and Gerson standing with her, between his two foster kids; at Liron, who looks so relaxed you’d think ze’d dozed off if you didn’t know hir; at Mettaton with one leg up in the air while Astis chews his lip; at Holly’s quiet focus on you while Bratty and Catty hold each other’s hands beside her.

“Okay,” Alphys says again, softly, and then stronger: “Okay! I’m g-going to initialize the separation. This!! Might be a little uncomfortable!!! B-but try to b-bear with it. Think of it like… like a visit to the dentist! It’ll b-be over before you know it.”

There’s a little laughter from around the room, and then Alphys bends over the SSS control unit and begins to flip switches.

The hum of machinery swells, echoing throughout the tunnel. The sound is weirdly warped by the Barrier, seeming to ululate against its own dull roar, like the two noises are pushing against each other, almost as if the sound of the SSS units is issuing the first challenge to the Barrier before you can actually try your hand at it.

“R-right,” Alphys murmurs next to you. “I-I’m g-going to induce separation in _stages,_ j-just in case. B-bear with this, here.”

She pushes her glasses up on her snout and enters a few commands on her console. Her stubby clawed fingers are shaking so obviously that even you can see it, though she’s mostly turned away from you; there’s thick sweat beading on her face, starting to drip and soak into the collar of her lab coat.

Light flares in the corner of your vision, and you startle a little, your heart thumping uncomfortably against the front of your chest: The entirety of the unit Holly is in has lit up. She closes her eyes without seeming perturbed at all (well, you guess she _would_ be used to this, since she and Prase were the ones who spent the most time working with her and the other scientists on developing these things). Moments later there’s a brilliant shower of light, and her soul appears just over her body, a shining yellow that almost hurts your eyes to stare at directly.

“Oh, my word,” you hear Mettaton murmur from where he’s standing over Astis; Bratty and Catty are staring transfixed even as they clutch each other’s hands.

“L-looking p-pretty stable,” Alphys mumbles. “M—moving on to the next, then…”

Turning to face Astis directly means that you won’t be able to watch Alphys, so you dither for a moment, but still you turn to look. Astis closes his eyes and his brow furrows; he chews at his own mouth for a while, and Mettaton hovers over him silently, eyes flicking up to Alphys behind you every now and again. The lights indicating that Astis’ SSS unit is working go on, and there’s another swell of light, and out comes Astis’ soul, a deep pretty green. Behind the soul, you can see Astis’ expression go slack, and your heart skips a beat uncomfortably before you mark his chest rising and falling.

“Okay, okay,” Alphys says. “Everything’s s-still looking g-good, so…”

You turn again; you don’t think you could bring yourself to not watch. Like Holly, Liron doesn’t seem to react at all when hir SSS unit lights up and hir soul emerges; Gerson keeps a beady eye on hir, though, until Innig’s on his other side powers on. Undyne keeps turning her head to look from her best friend to her girlfriend, teeth gritted, and Innig makes a face as her dark blue soul pops into the air.

You’re turning to look towards Rufus, who’s staring steadily at Innig’s face, when you realize that you can still _feel_ the other souls behind you. It’s not like sensing bullets, either; if you were to compare monster bullets to the glowing ceiling stones in Waterfall, the human souls are signal flares, bright and _hot_ and tugging at your attention insistently.

It creeps you out a little. Even way back when you and Chara were making your plan, you’d glossed over the mechanics of you actually absorbing their soul, because you’d never even seen a human soul before you met them, much less taken one into your body. You’d both figured that you would know what to do when the time came, by instinct. Not even Alphys had really been able to explain or practice with you as to what you should do; you were never around to watch the experiments anyway because they terrified you.

Rufus’ SSS unit lights up. He keeps watching Innig to the end, until his soul emerges. It feels alien to watch him lie so still.

The materialization of Prase’s soul goes just as smoothly as Holly’s did. Gaster keeps his hand on the back of their unit the whole while; Papyrus keeps shifting his weight from foot to foot, and Sans’ face is stony as he watches his older sibling. You wonder a little if any of them feel as magnetized to the souls as you do. That would be sick, you decide, and it’s a little sick of you to be thinking of that.

So you turn to face Chara instead, watching them over Alphys’ shoulders as she glares into her monitor and mutters to herself. Frisk is still holding their hand, watching them anxiously.

Their face looks waxen when the unit they’re lying in lights up, and unease strikes you in the spine for just a moment. Then Chara’s face contorts as if with pain, and their soul emerges amidst bright light, its same old shade of rich red.

“Should I…?” you ask, trailing off as you look down at Alphys.

“Hold on a m-minute,” she says. “I j-just want t-to make _sure_ everything’s stable b-before we move forward.”

You look at the screen too because just standing and waiting around is _excruciating,_ but you can’t make any sense at all of the scrawling graphs; all the labels are so abbreviated that you don’t know what any of them mean.

“O—okay,” she says at last. “E-everyone’s v-vitals are still stable. I-I’m releasing the last t-tethers, so, um… Asriel, uhh… d-do your thing?”

All as one, the seven human souls rise up and away from their vessels of flesh, bobbing and twirling in the air like the load screens of video games you played when you were a little kid. They all seem to gravitate towards you, and you just sort of… of hold up your hands in front of you and… beckon, but with your mind instead of your fingers.

The green soul bumps against your shoulder with affection that’s somehow clear to you immediately even without any visual tells. You reach out a hand to cup it, and sort of… of _focus_ on it, like you’re welcoming it in, and it presses against your sleeve and then _flashes_ and sends off pale sparkles and disappears.

Energy roars into you immediately, making you stand up straight; your surprise and Astis’ are mirrored exclamation points in your head. But you don’t have time to stop and consider: Rufus’ soul zips towards you like you’re pulling it along on a string, and it gives off the same performance as Astis’, and it’s like someone’s just turned on a bathtub faucet at full blast in your head, but instead of pouring water it’s pouring _power,_ bright and irresistible.

You would not be able to control it if the power wasn’t contained in Astis’ and Rufus’ souls. If it escaped those two containers it would immediately spread throughout your entire body and you feel like you know now how all of Alphys’ patients got all melty after being shot up with pure DT; in the force of this white-hot determination your body feels about as solid as ice cream left out on the countertop for hours.

Innig’s soul follows Rufus’, maybe just to be with him; light flashes across the little capillaries in your eyeballs. You feel _euphoric,_ and also jittery-scared; a comparison flashes into your mind of sitting on the back of a large warm animal, a horse, as a very small child, your legs not even long enough to wrap around its sides. (This memory is not yours.) Of being caught up in something so powerful that your ability to control it is in absolute doubt.

But you can’t stop here. Holly’s soul seems to sharpen your senses, and you can _feel_ her steady sense of purpose bring your mind back to full alert. Liron recoils immediately from the sense of other minds, but you can also feel hir knowledge give substance to you, and when Prase’s soul sinks into you their quiet calculation grounds you.

All that’s left is Chara’s soul, hovering bright in between your extended hands. You guide them in softly and press them to your chest, gentle. Heat floods you, a stronger impact than taking any of the others, _burning,_ and your mind and all the others are silenced for a moment by the sheer force of Chara’s willpower, the drive to finish the job.

They’re truly one with you, even if it’s only temporary, after all this time. Something warm overflows in your face, runs from your eyes, clumping salt-sticky in the fur of your muzzle.

The silence ends then, and you lose your mental footing in the press of busy minds for just a moment—

_the sharp stinging of your knees and your mouth and the dull pain of bruises along your arm and shoulder and back but beyond that the certain and almost vicious thrill that comes from acting out Right and punishing those who are Bad; these boys will think of their smarting kneecaps and bloody noses the next time they think to reach for Emily’s pigtails or call your mother outdated slurs. If they come for you next that’s more than fine, because you know how to defend yourself, and you’ll relish beating them up again. There’s a deep satisfaction in the feeling that’s almost like_

_your distant memories of being praised by your abuela. You’re grateful to the old lady with her weathered hands and face and shopping cart who told you which of the churches were safe for a brown boy and which to avoid—she marched you straight to the nearest one, quizzed you on the locations of the others until you had them memorized, told you to remember her when she came to their soup kitchen day. They’ll take your labor and it’s tough not being able to eat until you’re finished making food for the whole congregation, but you get to eat alongside them and tonight the priests have promised you can stay in the back room, sleeping on carpeted floors and with a blanket instead of on the hard pews. You would have been happy just to get out of the rain, but_

_the library has so many books, more than intriguing enough to make up for the inconvenience of the power outage’s depriving you of the internet. You will no one to notice you and when you are buried so deep in the shelves that you do not hear sounds of life from anywhere you lift your hands and let them emit light. All the halls of knowledge are yours for the plundering. You point your toes_

_and do your best to ignore the stares of the other children, mostly little blond white girls in tutus so frilly they look like cupcakes, the occasional white boy or Asian kid sprinkled in between them. It would be nice to have normal exercise clothes for this, if not a tutu of your own, but your father sends you in full fencing gear so that is what you have to stay in, the mask set politely near the door where no one will stumble over it. Last week one of the instructors offered to bring her son’s sweatpants, which she swears are the same size as yours, and you were offended enough by still being asked to wear boy clothes here that you said no at the time, but the idea of convenience is starting to wear your pride down. You hold your breath and close your eyes and_

_hurl yourself screaming through the bracket of gangly older boys who’ve got you cornered. They’re all bigger but you’ve got the force of desperation and they’re not expecting it, so you break through. You can’t afford to let them take your damn lunch money ‘cause you’ve already had to borrow from your sister once this week and Mama can only make so many box lunches. You gotta wait your turn. And anyway your brother’s gonna_

_sit you on his lap and call you silly nicknames, and your parents will roll their eyes but still put the Pacific Rim movies on for you all day, and you’ll go to school and everything will be normal. But when you open your eyes all you see is hospital ceiling, and your limbs are trapped by_

_underbrush, so you thrash until the collar of your shirt tears and you’re free again. Nothing is going to hold you back from your goal. The only chance at release you have is further up this mountain. All else is a return to the endless misery of living. So you set your teeth and swallow hard and you_

break back over the surface of the patchwork of memories with difficulty. You are _Asriel._ You’re _separate_ from Chara and the others still, even though your souls are connected for the time being. And it’s rude to just look through their minds like this, even on accident, so. With a force of will buoyed by seven humans’ worth of determination you force your mind back to the task.

“A-Asriel,” Alphys says from beside you. “H… how are you holding up?”

“I think I’ve got a handle on it,” you tell her. You’ve at least got enough of a handle on it to not have any weird and embarrassing mistakes for the time being, and that’s good enough, because it’s not like you’re going to hold on to any of these souls for any longer than it takes to try your luck with the Barrier.

You raise your head and stare at the archway, stare past it, into the corridor to the surface that the Barrier blocks. You take a deep breath, clench your fists, and let the air back out. Okay.

 _Where doing this,_ Prase’s voice supplies in the back of your mind.

 _Where making it hapen,_ Chara answers, and both of them laugh, and… you can sort of _feel_ for where the inside joke comes from if you try, but you don’t want to dive headfirst into a kaleidoscope of human memories again so you don’t do that.

You raise your foot, and then set it right back down on the ground, suddenly overwhelmed with the swirling power flowing through your body—it feels like if you stepped carelessly on the cables you’d straight-up _crush_ them. Instead you tap into your magic and float safely over them to land on empty cave floor.

It’s effortless to do. Usually you can only hover for a few minutes at the longest, but it feels like you could probably fly for longer if you wanted to, maybe indefinitely. The sheer energy of the human souls pouring into your body really feels like it’s infinite. You could do _anything_ right now—let off a hundred full-power Galacta Blazings in every direction, make whole helixes of Chaos Sabers to save up while you use one after another, maybe even try to pull off a Hyper Goner, the spell you designed for your childhood power fantasy OCs that you never had enough juice to duplicate in real life before.

You could probably change your body however you want to now, too—you could turn your fur rainbow colors, or you could make yourself into the Absolute God of Hyperdeath just like you always dreamed of when you were little. Human determination and monster magic blended together… it’s no wonder the legends speak of a monster having absorbed human souls as godlike.

Trying to keep your breathing steady, you venture further towards the Barrier. The tunnel around you starts to flash in waves of black and white—you’re here.

What are you supposed to do to destroy it, though? You’d been thinking of ripping it open with your bare hands or something badass like that, but now that your body contains human souls you’d probably just phase right through it. Maybe you _should_ try blasting it with a Chaos Buster or something.

 _Dude, you name your own attacks??_ Rufus says gleefully, and your face flushes as you try to nudge him away from your thoughts as firmly as possible without literally ejecting his soul from your body.

 _The human magicians who cast the spell would’ve made it with some sort of incantation,_ Liron supplies. Hir voice in your mind sounds distinctly uncomfortable, as if ze’s trying to keep hir distance from the press of other minds as much as ze can without leaving and breaking the link, but a picture—an illustration from a storybook about the war between monsters and humans, spread out over skinny human legs—pops into your mind’s eye. The image on the page is of a sword-wielding human in ragged clothes and one with long hair and a staff. _You might be able to break it on a similar principle._

That’s all well and good, but an incantation? What should you even SAY?

 _Maybe it doesn’t matter as long as it’s… well, heartfelt,_ Innig tells you.

 _Whatever the case,_ Chara says with iron in their voice, _we’ll back you up however we can. So go ahead and give it a try._

You roll your shoulders a little, shake out your arms, and take a couple deep breaths. Okay, then.

You rise back into the air, as much to psych yourself up as because it quickens the flow of magic in your blood. All you have to do is raise your hands and imagine, and the air around you fills with dozens, then _hundreds,_ of teeming stars.

They launch forward in one massive rush, whistling past you with such force it nearly hurts your ears. All of them lodge into the Barrier, and for a moment you can see-feel-sense cracks forming in its solid mass, but those cracks run backwards and smooth over the next moment.

 _Shoot, that was so close, too!_ Astis says.

 _Then we just have to try again harder,_ Holly insists.

You grit your teeth for just a moment and then narrow your eyes, rising higher into the air. You extend your arms and concentrate until your whole body is pulsing with magic, with determination, with the hopes and dreams of two races and the weight of thirty years: The seven souls of your friends appear in a circle in front of you, turning like a water wheel.

This time— _this time, for sure—_

Your jaws open and you yell something; you’re not even sure what you say, yourself.

And with a rending sound—the world tears open.

 

 

By the time you’re aware again and the great roaring of air has stopped, you’re crouched on the cave floor on all fours with your eyes squeezed shut.

 _Did we…?_ Rufus ventures in your head, breaking the quiet, and you open your right eye a crack, then the left, and begin to straighten up.

The heavy buzzing strobing light, harsh flares of black and white, is gone from the tunnel. Instead, the tunnel just continues on forward; cracks in the ceiling filter down to illuminate patches of grass in moonlight. There’s another carved stone archway, and past that the tunnel turns slightly upwards, so that you can’t quite see what’s past it…

…but you _can_ see _natural light against the rocks and earth there,_ and you can SMELL _air that’s even sharper and sweeter to your nose than the air in the throne room._

You start to shake all over. Everything in you is screaming to just charge down the tunnel until you’re standing in the cave mouth, able to look out onto the sky and the outside world.

But if you _do_ go, you’re not going to want to come back inside. And you have to tell everyone that you succeeded. You have to let go of the souls so that everyone can go back to their bodies, and you can all go out together!

It’s so _hard_ to turn away from freedom now that it’s so close and there’s _literally_ nothing in your way anymore, but you take one staggering step to the side and then swing yourself around to take shaky steps back into the antechamber. Almost everyone’s talking excitedly in the back of your head, so that you can’t make out any individual words, and it’s starting to give you a headache.

Alphys’ head snaps up as soon as you get to the archway. “W-w-w-w,” she begins, her puckered mouth caught on her buck teeth and her eyes wide. “We felt the b-b-blast, but d-did…?”

“It worked,” you interrupt, almost as soon as her voice starts to trail. “The Barrier has been destroyed. We’re free.”

There’s a great shout from all the gathered monsters, who turn to clasp hands with their neighbors or leap up into the air.

“F—first I think, uhh,” Alphys says, raising her voice so that she’ll still be heard over the celebrations, “l-let’s g-g-get the, the souls b-back in their proper b-bodies?? One at a time, if you can, Asriel,” she goes on, suddenly anxious.

You don’t have to deliberate over whose soul to release first: Liron’s claustrophobia at being in such close contact with everyone has been ringing like horror strings in the base of your skull this whole time, so you let go of hir like the string of a balloon and hir glowing purple soul comes loose from the center of your chest with a _pop_ like your sternum is what’s making the sound. It twirls through the air light as a butterfly and comes to hover over hir body, spinning impatiently.

Alphys fumbles with the command console, and then the soul drops slowly until it’s sunk back inside of Liron’s chest. “V-vital signs look s, st-t, look okay,” Alphys announces, and the lights on that SSS unit alone slowly go off. Liron sits up stiffly, the wires of the life support bits pulling tight from under hir shirt, and makes a face like ze’s just stuffed a whole handful of horseradish into hir mouth.

“Easy now, kiddo,” Gerson says, helping hir get unconnected.

“How d-do you feel?” Alphys stammers.

“Better now,” Liron replies, distinctly dry, and nervous laughter rolls through the whole crowd.

 _Me next me next me next!!!!!!!!!!!_ Rufus clamors, and you ask out loud, “Alphys, can we keep going? Rufus wants out.”

“O-okay,” Alphys says, still laughing a little, and she returns to the console.

Rufus’ soul goes rocketing out of your chest, and it’s even more uncomfortable than with Liron because of the speed, but you’re left feeling better afterwards—like you’ve been tipsy after having a little too much wine to drink and you’re just starting to sober up. The orange heart wiggles in the air over its proper mortal shell, turning little circles, until Alphys has confirmed that Rufus’ body is fine and powers down the unit.

The first thing Rufus does after he opens his eyes is yank the collar of his shirt down so that he can pull the little medical pads and wires off; he discards them roughly to each side and then bounces up and onto his feet, grabbing at his parents’ arms. Both Dogi’s tails are wagging like they’re imitating Lesser Dog and gearing up for liftoff. ( _Lifdoff,_ Chara and Prase chorus in your head, like a couple of memeing heralds.)

“Holy _shit,”_ he says, bouncing in place, his voice starting to raise. He doesn’t seem to notice or care. “Holy shit, holy shit! _Fresh air!_ We didn’t get to see the outside yet but it’s gonna be _so fuckin’ great,_ I can’t wait to show you—”

“Next?” Alphys says, and you think a vague question mark at the five souls that are still inside you. There’s a feeling like they’re all looking at each other, and then Innig’s soul separates from your chest without any further fanfare.

Rufus, significantly distracted from regaling his parents with your adventure, bounces in place while Alphys does her last doublechecks and powers down Innig’s SSS unit. She untangles herself from it in a more stately way, and looks first to Liron to confirm that ze’s doing all right (ze is, in fact, looking at hir sister, having dropped one hand from hir head into hir lap) before sitting up and getting pounded on the back by Undyne. Rufus jumps straight into her lap and flings both arms around her neck, and the two of them start making out heatedly to whistles and cheers from Undyne and Rufus’ parents and hearty chuckling from Gerson.

“Dad says let’s keep it PG-13 on account a’ the baby in the room,” Sans calls, jerking a thumb at Frisk; everyone in the cheering crowd jumps a little guiltily. Frisk sticks out their tongue at all of this.

Out of the four remaining with you, Prase seems the least comfortable sharing headspace with you, so you send them on their way next. It’s still _super_ unpleasant to let souls go, but each time the relief is palpable: It feels like you were swelled up too big for your skin and are slowly returning to normal size. (Chara and Astis seem to have a similar thought about that, but you can feel them both trying to hold it in for Holly, who nonetheless seems unamused.)

Alphys powers down Prase’s SSS unit, and there’s a flurry of clattering bones as Gaster, Sans, and Papyrus all crowd them, helping them out of their cords. They put up with the fussing for a few moments before saying something low you don’t catch that gets their family to let them sit up.

You release Holly’s soul; at least this way, you think while you’re gritting your teeth through her pulling apart from you, she’ll be spared any future dick jokes. (Astis snickers; Chara is quiet.) As soon as Alphys powers down her unit and her soul returns to her body, she removes the cables and pads from her own body with a practiced hand. Once she’s sat up and pushed herself off of the medical table, she’s swept up into a double hug from Bratty and Catty, who both start giggling in what you’re pretty sure is a release of pent-up nerves.

Astis tries to make it easy for you when you let him go, waiting to separate from your chest with your exhale. Alphys, looking considerably more relaxed, powers down his unit; Mettaton swoops him up almost immediately. “Oh, _Astis!”_ he coos. “Look at you—our hero! My, my, my, you’ve become a true star even before _me!”_

Laughing, Astis pushes at Mettaton’s noodle arms until the robot releases him; Liron sits up and reaches out to him, and Astis blushes and stretches out a hand to link their fingertips loosely.

You watch the heartwarming reunions and smile for a few minutes, only realizing at length that Chara is still with you, a steady heat in your chest. “C’mon,” you say to them softly. They seem reluctant, but when you cup your hands at your chest and pull them back, out they come.

They don’t, however, hover back over to their body. Alphys seems to notice this a few moments after you do, and her hands still on the control unit, her smile fading into a frown.

“Chara?” you say, your brow furrowing as you stare down at the red heart in your hands. “You need to go back to your body now. Alphys is all ready. Everyone’s waiting.”

And then you hear their voice clearly in your head, even though you and they are no longer fully connected:

_I’m not going back, Asriel._

“Chara,” you say slowly, a great yawning pit of dread opening in the bottom of your belly, “what… do you mean by that?”

The SSS unit their body is in—the only one that’s still online—lets out a beep, and the lights along the top turn red.

“Ohhh,” Alphys says, her eyes widening to the size of teacup saucers. “No, oh no, oh no no no no no no NO…”

“Alphy…?” Undyne ventures, frowning, taking one step away from Innig and towards her girlfriend.

“Everyone st—stay calm,” Alphys says, nervousness clear in her voice. “Chara is—Chara’s vitals are l-losing stability. I need to c-concentrate.”

There’s a sharp gasp from the vicinity of the SSS unit. When you turn, Frisk has both hands slapped over their mouth, eyes wide and frightened.

“Chara…,” you say, as calm and even as you can manage, “please talk to me. I d-don’t think I understand.”

 _I’m not going back,_ Chara tells you. And you can—you can feel it through their soul like you could never parse from their tone alone: Deep, deep exhaustion, deeper than bone-deep, deeper than the endless well of their despair. _I don’t think I…_ Here they pause. _It’s been thirty years, Ree,_ they begin again, their words very gentle. _I’m tired now. I don’t think I have it in me anymore. I’ve worked so hard to get back to this place, to accomplish our original goal… I don’t doubt at all that everything will go smoothly. We’ve put so much planning into this. Can’t… can’t that be enough?_

“Chara, you’re…” Shamefully, your voice has begun to quake. “You can’t talk like this. You can’t! Don’t give up _now!_ We’re so _close,_ you—you have to stay determined! Okay?”

 _I just can’t do this anymore,_ they say. _Ree, maybe if… maybe if I were a better person, a stronger person, I could keep fighting. I could go back to my body and I could keep struggling. But I can’t. I don’t want to. It’s better this way._

 _Moses was never meant to make it to the Promised Land,_ they go on as you shake your head mutely. Alphys is frantically scrabbling at the master console, but the warning beeps from Chara’s SSS unit aren’t stopping. Frisk is whimpering from behind their hands, looking down at Chara’s body; their face is shielded by their hair and you can’t see what their expression is. Everyone else is dead silent. If you shed a whisker here the sound of it hitting the ground would go off like an explosion. _I always felt it, deep down, that I was never going to make it to the surface alive. And I’ve made my peace with that. Because here—because the underground, and living with you and all the monsters—this has been the Promised Land for me, don’t you understand? I don’t need the surface. I don’t need freedom. I’ve had thirty years of happiness here with you and everyone. That’s enough for me._

“Don’t—” Your voice cracks, and you swallow. “You don’t have to be satisfied with just that! Humans can… humans can still live a lot longer than this—you have a, a right to live longer and be even happier, s-so…!”

 _I don’t want to,_ Chara says, so sharply that you shut up. _I don’t want to go back there._

Oh, you think. You feel like someone’s just slapped you across the face. Oh. Of course.

 _Ree, I… my body is all but useless now,_ they say, and they’re not calm or gentle anymore. Their voice in your head is heavy with tears. _I can barely fight anymore. After everything I went through to feel safe in my own skin, to feel like I had any kind of control… that’s all slipped through my fingers. If push came to shove I don’t have confidence that I could protect you, or Frisk, or myself. And that’s all I HAD, Asriel. That’s all I had to convince myself that maybe, maybe it could be bearable out there, if I were in peak condition, and… I’m only going to get worse, do you understand?_

“Chara, I…” You shake your head again. “I get it. But we’ll—we can talk to Mom and Dad about this. There’ll be a way! It might take time, but…”

 _You don’t understand anything,_ they say, and there’s a long silence.

“Everyone g-get clear!” Alphys says in a sharp, commanding voice. Your head snaps to the side, and Frisk staggers back. The lights on the SSS unit that haven’t turned red slowly build up yellow, and you can hear immense electricity charging. There’s a sound that hurts your ears, and Chara’s body jerks on the table, jumping up and then lolling back down. Their head flops to the side, hair falling across their face; they’ve fallen in such a way that nearly all the hair that’s visible is the same white as your fur.

 _I’m scared, Ree,_ Chara says softly. _I can’t go back. Please, you can’t ask me to go back._

And you see it.

Everything they must have been barely holding back before, everything you never looked at closely because all the other humans’ minds and your task were too big a distraction—it scorches your hands like you’re being branded, flowing up your arms and drowning your brain.

Rocks, bricks, empty bottles being thrown; the sick thud of impact, of blood crawling. A thousand screaming chanting voices, the sheer animal terror of being chased, hands grabbing for the hem of a skirt, a leg, the side of underwear once. The terrifying, unpredictable swings of their mother from being as loving and nurturing as your own parents to slapping and withholding meals, getting her fingers into Chara’s hair and yanking, refusing to acknowledge the real them, shouting that she wished she’d never given birth to them. Always, always, the chant of their deadname. You want to cover your ears to it, to scour it out of your brain, to divorce it from them like any other four-letter word.

The shadowy, half-remembered figure of an adult man, at least three times Chara’s size: The smell of cheap, sour beer and the _weight,_ the force of the huge meaty hands around their throat. A voice like cracked gravel in their ear, stubble scratching their cheek, their own father promising to rape them raw and bloody. Promising to cut them open while they’re still alive like they did in the camps—you have only a few seconds to be confused by this until you aren’t, oh god, you aren’t, you didn’t _know,_ you didn’t—and toss their gutted carcass out with the kindling to burn in the yard when he was done. Their mother standing by the wall with a bloody mouth, her nose dripping onto her shirt, expressionless, staring disinterested into the distance, ignoring them calling for help.

Creak of a floorboard in the night, might as well be the snap of a trap on a mouse, awake and covering their own mouth to mute their tears, looking around wildly for a hiding place that isn’t there because what if tonight is the night.

Your chest—your stomach clutches. Your breath’s coming sharp and ragged. You swallow hard against the fear your bile’ll be rising any second. Oh, god. Oh god. You knew it was bad, but you never—you never even thought. How could they—how could _anyone_ be so evil as to say those things to their own child?

 _They will still be alive,_ Chara thinks. Somewhere distant, Alphys is ordering everyone back so that she can try to shock their body back into working one more time. _They will still be alive, and they will still be living in that village. They will find me. They will know me. I can’t—Asriel, I wouldn’t be able to defend myself. I’m too afraid of them. My body is too broken down to be able to respond for me automatically. I would rather die right here and now than go through that._

You can’t even fumble for a response, because… god. You’re such an idiot! Chara told you what they were scared of a whole _week_ ago, and you just—just laughed it off like you didn’t care, and then you got so distracted by Frisk that you considered it solved just because that was easier! If you’d just—just been more open, more comforting, more understanding, then Chara wouldn’t—!

“A-Asriel,” Alphys says, and you sway so that you’re staring up at her, force your eyes to focus. “Chara’s b-body is… their body is shutting d-down. This is m-my fault. I should’ve, should’ve t-taken a closer examination of whether they were r-really c-capable of withstanding something s-so stressful in their, in their c-current state. Their soul—their soul needs to g-go b-b, to return to their body _now,_ or… w-we’re g-g-going to l-lose them.”

“C—Chara,” you manage feebly, staring down at the soul in your hands. “Chara, _p-please…”_

 _This is for the best,_ they say. _This was enough for me. I’ve had years of love, comfort, and safety. I’ve done my part. The surface may be nothing but a nightmare for me, but… I believe that the monsters can find happiness there, if they choose to. And…_

 _And you don’t need me anymore, Ree._ This so gentle, and so loving. _You and Frisk have each other. I know you’ll be alright. Everyone will be there for you, okay? You’re going to do a great job out there, as the king, as Frisk’s father, underneath a sky full of the stars you always wanted to see so badly. You’re going to be just fine._

“Chara, _no,”_ you half-wail. “I—this isn’t a matter of me _needing_ you! I don’t care about that! I _want_ you to be with me, because I love you, and because all that stuff you said—it would be so much better, we’d all be so much happier if you were there with us! So, please—there’s still time…!”

Silence, but for the plaintive beeping of the SSS unit and Frisk sobbing into their hands.

 _There is one solution I am willing to consider,_ Chara says.

“Tell me,” you say, stumbling over your own words. “Chara, tell me, I’ll do anyth—”

_I won’t return to my body. But… if you’re really so determined to keep me with you… Absorb my soul, permanently this time. I am not able to face the surface on my own, as myself, as a target. But with you… with you, that might be different. That world isn’t worth living in. But if I must keep existing—if I could become part of you—that wouldn’t be so bad._

_I could “live” with that, you know. Being your heart._

Your breath catches in your throat.

 _Let me die, or take my soul,_ Chara says. _Those are your choices. I’m fine with either. I’m so tired of being alive, Ree. I’ve done everything I could. I have nothing more to give. Please just let me die._

You take a deep breath, and cross the room in careful steps so that you’re standing over Chara’s body.

They really do look used-up. All you can see of their hair is white, they have dark rings around their eyes, and their skin’s so waxy pale that even their habitual blush is almost invisible. Their chest is still rising and falling, but only faintly and unevenly.

You guide Chara’s soul down to their body, and you hold it softly against their wasted chest. And you smile.

“That plan sucks, Char,” you say softly. Tears well up in your eyes and drip readily, splashing your hands and their sweater. “It sucks just as much as the last time you tried to do this. But… there can be a third answer.”

 _Asriel,_ they say, tired.

You shake your head. You could appeal to them how much you need them, how much Frisk needs them, how badly it would devastate everyone here to lose them. But guilt tripping them isn’t the answer, when they’re already feeling so weak. You might be able to coerce them into staying that way, but both of you would pay for it later: It could destroy your relationship. It could destroy Chara themself.

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you when you tried to tell me what was wrong,” you say. Your voice is wobbling, but you let it: You always have been a crybaby. “We can rethink our plans to accommodate. Sure, it’s not like we’re just going to all move to the surface right away anyway, but we can take it slower. Rearrange some stuff so that you can stay off the front lines while you recover, both physically _and_ mentally. Keep you out of the human public’s eye as much as possible, until you think you’re up to it. I know you’ll want to get back into things eventually—we’re partners, after all. But we’ve all been leaning on you too hard, taking it for granted that you were up to it. We let you down so bad, and I’m so sorry. We all should’ve been paying closer attention.”

 _Ree,_ they say, edged with warning.

“And if that… _horrible_ man ever comes _anywhere_ near you ever again, I will kick his ass _so hard_ he’ll never even _think_ of bothering you again,” you vow, shaking, crying openly. “And if for some reason that doesn’t work—I swear I’ll fucking kill him.”

 _Ree,_ they say again, and: _Whatever happened to all your talk about not gaining LOVE?_

“Neither killing nor being killed _is_ still my hope,” you admit, “but, Chara… if it’s ever your life or his life… yours is so much more important, to me and to everyone. It might not sit easy on my conscience, but… if I had to live with it, I think I could. If it’s really the only way to keep you safe… I can at least promise you this much.”

 _I’m so tired, Ree,_ Chara says, and now their voice is wavering with tears too.

“I know.”

 _I’m so scared, Ree,_ they press, and now they really are sobbing, and it tears at your heart.

“I know, Chara. I know.”

_Then just stop this! Please—stop doing this! And just let me die!_

You shake your head.

 _Stop it!_ they cry. _Stop it now!!_

“I can’t,” you say, and you smile through your own tears. “Chara… do you know why I’m doing this? Why I keep fighting to keep you around…?”

They’re silent.

“I’m doing this… because you’re special, Chara,” you tell them. “Because I love you, more than anybody else. So I don’t want this to end just yet. I’m not ready for this to be over, Chara, I’m not ready for you to leave. I don’t want to say goodbye to someone as precious as you just yet. And… it’s still just like I told you, all those years ago. If I took your soul… we’d always be together, but it wouldn’t be the same. I still want to hold you. I still want to kiss you, and hold your hand, and cuddle with you. I still want to see your face when I wake up every morning.

“Maybe this is just me being selfish again. But… I love you, Chara. I don’t want to let you go just yet. I promise that we can still make this work in a way that’s not going to hurt you. If you’re tired, we can let you rest, and if you’re scared, then we won’t put you in danger. If you’re feeling sick and weak, then we’ll talk to Mom and Dad, and talk about what we need to do for your health. I _promise,_ Chara. Whatever it takes to make this work out, I’ll see it done.

“Chara, you’re…” You hesitate a little, here. “You were just desperate when you came here, and we put too much pressure on you, but even so… you appeared to us like an angel, and you guided us through our fear and our despair for thirty years. Just because you doubted sometimes, just because you got angry and were afraid and made mistakes, that doesn’t mean that you have to be punished for it. You don’t _have_ to look at the time we’ve had together and say that that’s enough for you. There’s so much that you still wanted to do in life, isn’t there…? You’ve still gotta see how that silly comic of yours ends. We’ve still gotta watch Frisk grow up. So… If you still want to do that… It’s okay to stay here with the people who love you.”

 _Ree,_ they say, soft, like they’re begging.

“Please, Chara.” Your voice breaks, again. “Please, don’t leave me.”

 _Ree,_ they say, and then: _I’m sorry,_ so small.

Your heart stops, for just a moment.

Then the heat and solidity of their soul vanishes from underneath their hands, and you hold your breath—

—and their body stirs feebly.

You exhale in one big _whoff,_ a silly awkward noise. You start shaking all over.

Chara lifts their arms to cross them over their face, hiding their expression, and they start to sob.

It’s an ugly, inelegant noise that rends your ears, and your heart tears in two to hear them crying like this even as you’re still shaking with relief.

“I’m sorry,” Chara manages in a voice that’s barely more than a whisper, wet and stuffy through their tears and snot. “I’m sorry I’m so weak, I’m sorry I’m always like this, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you croon, bending down to nuzzle their forehead. It’s hard to hug them while they’re still strapped to the table like this. “It’s okay. I should’ve listened to you better, so it’s my fault too.”

Frisk leans into your arm, too, and you stay like that for what feels like a long while.

“O—okay,” Alphys says, and clears her throat. “Let’s—let’s get you out of that, Chara, it c-can’t be c-comfortable.”

“It’s really not,” Chara says, muffled into your shoulder, and you laugh a little.

You and Frisk both get up reluctantly, and Alphys stumbles over to help Chara get all unbuckled, even producing a handkerchief for them to wipe their face with. They hand it back to her a little sheepishly, and she stuffs it back into her coat pocket with assurances that it’s fine, she’s done the same thing plenty of times.

And finally, _finally,_ Chara sits up.

They run their fingers through their hair, and you… you finally notice, and you gasp a little. “Chara, your—your _hair.”_

They turn to you, still stiff and shaky, all red-faced from crying.

“D’you, uh,” you babble, shaking your head. “Alphys, do you have an, uhh…”

“N—no mirror, but I have,” she stammers, and produces her phone from one pocket, batting at it with her claws until she comes up with the selfie app. She holds it up for Chara so that they can see their reflection.

Chara looks, and then narrows their eyes, face contorting with disbelief. “Well, _fuck!”_

You have no idea when exactly it happened, but their hair is white— _all_ white, now, except for a few little stripes of their original dark red.

Chara starts to giggle. First it’s tiny bursts of laughter, and then they’re all but cackling into their hands, half laughing and half sobbing.

“I d-don’t,” Alphys says, fidgeting. “I d-don’t think that this, uhh, I mean there’s always… there’s always d-dye, b-but…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Chara says, breathing deep, still giggling a little in between their exclamations. “It’s—it’s fine. God, I probably brought it on myself for never being able to drop my—my stupid Moses fixation. It’s fine. It’s whatever. This is just my life now.”

Frisk puts a tentative hand on Chara’s back and rubs up and down, their brows pinched with worry; Chara just sighs and straightens back up.

“I’m fine, really,” they say, and they wrap one shaky arm around Frisk’s waist. “I’m sorry for worrying you.”

Frisk shakes their head as if to say _don’t worry about it,_ but they still hug Chara tightly. You lean down to kiss the crowns of both their heads.

Footsteps echoing from the other side of the cave begin to register in your ears, and you raise your head a little to see that your parents have arrived.

“Greetings, everyone,” says your mother. It’s only because you know her so well that you can see how stiff her smile is. “How goes the attempt?”

You laugh a little bit. “Well—it sure didn’t go off without incident,” you manage, “but… we did it. We managed to break the Barrier. Everyone’ll be able to go free now.”

“That is splendid news,” your mother says.

“Oh, goodness,” says your father, raising one hand to his chest. “Chara…”

You can’t tell whether he means Chara’s hair or their overall tearstained state, but his noticing is enough to get them to start shaking again. Your parents look at each other briefly and sweep through the crowd to hover over you and your partner and child.

This is fine by you, actually, because you really really want to just hide your face in your mom’s shoulder for a few minutes and pretend that you’re still a kid and that she can take care of everything, and now you can do that.

“Oh, dear,” she says, half worried and half amused. “Shh. My dear, brave boy.”

“We’ve got—a lot of stuff that we need to work on,” you manage. Her gentle hands on your back are so soothing. “And fix. About our, uhh, our plans for surface stuff. But I think we’re gonna be okay.”

“I—” Chara begins, their voice also muffled; you pull away from your mother for long enough to see that they’re half leaned into your father’s chest, and he’s got his arms around them and Frisk both. “I—need help. I’m sorry. I need help again. I don’t—I don’t think I can keep going like this anymore.”

“That is quite all right,” your father says softly, one hand on Chara’s back and one hand on Frisk’s. “We will get everything all sorted out together, just you see.”

You’re allowed a blessed handful of moments to just huddle up together like this with your family, and then finally Alphys clears her throat, and you all look up.

“That’s—uh. I-I guess I’m glad that uh, that uhh, things are looking better, but… How about we, uh… g-go outside? I’m sure everyb-body… wants to get a l, a l, a p-peek at the sky after a-all this time.”

Everyone sits up a little straighter just to hear those words, and you know that she’s absolutely right.

“Chara, d’you think you can…?” you ask softly. They wipe their face and grimace and nod.

“Stand back a moment,” they say, and you clear them a space; they call up their trident and pull themself to their feet on its haft, smiling at you all crookedly. “I happen to have this handy built-in walking stick, in case things start to get difficult.”

“Okay,” you tell them, and smile. “Let’s go.”

 

 

The march through the tunnel is a solemn one.

Everyone decided to let you, Chara, and Frisk take the lead, meaning that the pace is slow, even though everybody probably wants to charge straight out and get to see the sky for the first time: Chara’s steps are slow and pained even though they’re using their trident to lean on.

But you make it through the tunnel that the Barrier was blocking, and under the stone archway, and the tunnel begins to tip upwards—and—

Hands still held out to help Chara if they stumble, you step from the tunnel out into the open for the very first time.

There’s moss on the ground underneath your paw, soft and fuzzy and a little slippery, and you flex your toes on it, considering. The world around you is lit from the side and slightly above, in a pale light that’s different somehow in tone or in color than the magical light and tiny puddles of natural light you’re used to.

You give up on trying to analyze it, and lift your head—and your mouth drops open as you gasp.

There’s just _so much_ to take in: From the mountainside you’re as high up as, as the castle ramparts, and can look down on the sprawling surface world below, but it’s—the whole world is _green_ and _gold_ and _red,_ and the silhouette of a town is still some ways away, just close enough for you to be able to clearly count the tallest buildings. The world spreads out in every direction, coming up against _other mountains,_ which are so much bigger than you thought they’d look just from pictures from human books, and, and there are _huge lakes_ that reflect light so shiny it hurts your eyes, and—

And you look up, and your eyes blur.

The sky. The sky. The _sky._ It’s dark blue where you look up, dotted with tiny pinpricks of white that must be the _real stars,_ but then it turns rich purples and pinks, fading into even richer golds along the horizon. This—this must be what they call the _sunrise._

“Oh,” you manage. Your breath steams a little in the air, and you shiver. The air out here is as brisk as it is fresh. “Oh, wow.”

Frisk reaches out to squeeze your hand, and you look down at them—they’re gazing up at you with a proud smile.

“Isn’t it beautiful, everyone?” your father says, alerting you to the fact that everyone else has emerged from the tunnel too. You look around: Your parents are standing next to you with their arms around each other, heads tilted up to the sky like yours has been. Everybody is looking around with awestruck faces, even the humans—even Bratty and Catty are dead silent as they flank Holly. Even Mettaton hasn’t uttered a single word.

“Holy shit,” Undyne says. “The sunlight’s so _nice!_ The air’s so FRESH!!!”

“I c-can’t b-believe I’m ab-bout to say this,” Alphys says, “b-but this is even prettier than it is in anime…”

Gaster and Prase are both pointing out various features of nature to Papyrus, who’s gazing about with gobsmacked wonder; even Sans’ smile looks completely relaxed and genuine. Innig and Rufus are holding hands; so are Rufus’ parents, and so are Astis and Liron. Gerson is quiet as he leans on his cane, a look of deep contentment on his face.

“It took so much for us to come this far, but… we made it,” you say, turning back up towards the endless sky. “This—this’s the _beginning._ The beginning of a new era of peace between humans and monsters… I know everybody’s probably eager to set off and explore, but… it’s gonna need to be a process. We’ve got to adjust our plans, and… after that we’ll be relying a lot on our ambassadors. But we _will_ make this work.”

“Very well said,” your mother tells you, and you grin, bashful.

Chara has been silent all this time, you realize, and so you turn to face them, thinking to ask if they’re still doing okay. But the moment you see their face, you lose all words: They’re staring into the sunrise with tears streaming silently down their face, something like hope and fear and relief all jumbled up together on their face. Both their hands are so tight around their trident as they lean on it that their knuckles are white.

The new pale color of their hair is going to take some getting used to, but—glowing along the outlines from a sunlit halo, they’re even more beautiful than ever. You can feel that old familiar sensation of your heart swelling in your chest, like you’re falling in love with them all over again.

So you put a gentle arm around them and lean down to nuzzle the top of their head. “It’s going to be okay.”

“It had better be okay,” Chara says softly, squinting dubiously at the horizon and sighing.

Frisk wiggles through the gap between your bodies, startling you both into looking down at them. They smile up at both of you, and then wrap their arms around Chara, pressing their face into Chara’s shoulder in a way that cannot possibly be comfortable when wearing glasses.

“I’m glad you stayed,” they whisper, their voice so tiny you have to strain your ears to catch it properly. “Thank you. I would have missed you so much.”

Chara folds their own arms around Frisk’s body and closes their eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I almost…”

Frisk shakes their head. “It’s not your fault.”

“Frisk is right,” you say, and hug them both to you. “You have good reasons to hate humanity and fear this world. But I promise—I _swear_ to you, Chara—that everything is going to be okay. We’ve worked so hard for this happy ending… I promise, I’m not going to let everything you’ve done for us go to waste. I love you and Frisk so much—and I’ll make _sure_ it’s okay.”

Chara leans against your chest and closes their eyes. “I trust you.”

**Author's Note:**

> the title, epigraph, and chapter titles in this fic all come from [this prose post](https://marchenwings.tumblr.com/post/141520760759/) by tumblr user inkskinned.
> 
> thank you to everyone who has supported this series.
> 
> this fic got fanart from hedonistbyheart ([chara and frisk, including a few scenes from the previous two fics](http://hedonistbyheart.tumblr.com/post/162913395489/); [the dreemurrs](http://hedonistbyheart.tumblr.com/post/168341809509/)) and notinaworldwithoutyou ([chara](http://notinaworldwithoutyou.tumblr.com/post/168312039291/), [the dreemurrs](http://notinaworldwithoutyou.tumblr.com/post/168511843361/), [more chara](http://notinaworldwithoutyou.tumblr.com/post/171187132901/))! thank you!


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